Ends

A month comes to an end. The yellow leaves have all fallen, the little kids dress up and wander the neighborhood, it gets cold. I have lost track of time, I have lost track of everything except the things that truly matter. They sit in my belly, digesting, building my cell walls and that strange part of a human spirit we cannot see in microscopes. I went for a last run along the mountain and the bald headed eagle returned to say its farewells, sweeping past me before moving on to other tasks, it was a sweet nod and I took it, smiling. Packed my bags, prepared for other shores.

This morning I pulled a last note from the envelope, my constant companion on a strange journey I could never have predicted. I read the words out loud in the still morning, a quiet laugh bubbling in my chest at the absurdity of its accuracy. I went to the desert with a hundred questions, and yet somehow I answered the ones I didn’t even know I carried. The desert will do that. The journey will, too. I sit with heavy bags and a full heart in an airport terminal as though everything isn’t different, the little note playing between my fingers. A month comes to an end. Everything else is only beginning. 

But no matter, the road is life. 

Notes

They return slowly, the words. They seep into your stream of consciousness nearly undetected at first, just whispers of something familiar and an uneasy stirring like you forgot the gas on. They build in your spine until they expand in your lungs, there's a flicker behind your eyelids as the lights come back on, everything smells of dust but more like a used books shop than something died. A typewriter roars to life. A story unfolds.  

Wretched lifelines stretch across your skin, gnarl your muscles into convoluted confusions, but no matter. You will live this life as it was given to you, as best you can, you will race across the world and into countless brick walls, because at the end of the day, when you have sweated and cried and bled, sometimes there will be a word, or two, or a string of sentences that make sense, and all your wear will wash away and you will be born anew.  

You have gone to the ends of the earth But you will come home some time.

Mornings

I have to be rent
and pulled apart and live
according to the demons
and the imagination
in me. 

I'm restless. 
Things are calling me away. 

My hair is being pulled
by the stars
again. 

Manix

A picture floats into my inbox, alphabet avenues on just another ordinary Monday and this is what life is. My heart skips a beat, counts down days, calculates hours. How soon I’ll touch your streets again. Today I sat in a sunny window and cried - again - at the closing chapters of a book
I never seem to finish, of a story that I want so much to do justice, as though it mattered. We sat later drinking wine and I thought this is what I came here to do. Now it is done, and it was the strangest feeling but perhaps it was just the alcohol soothing my anxious veins.

Today I sat in a sunny window and knew - again - that the Word was magic and that just one minute in its sunshine is worth a hundred weeks of work. I forget, sometimes, but how easy it is to remember. Today I wrote a story that I think perhaps is is not entirely dreadful, and what a gift that was, if only to me. Tomorrow, the work begins anew.

That’s okay, too.

Gift

The late October afternoon sun is gentle, knowing its power wanes but is still Everything. The mountainside limps from summer fires but every tree that survived stretches its branches taller now than before toward the skies. I stood on a log across the river, remembering a balanced weight somewhere at my core, remembering what it is to breathe - to truly breathe - when no one else can hear you. Up the river bank, a small school bus stands waiting, its signs painted over and the stop sign decommissioned, the inside a strange home in the wild. My phone lies silent, with no connection to the world except for the soft rumbling of the odd car through the forest.

I stepped out later, long after sunset when the warm Indian summer day had given way to approaching winter, to brush my teeth in the dark. A million stars wrapped every inch of my periphery, the night so black that the Milky Way looked dusty. I found myself waiting for a shooting star, but then I realized: I’ve already been given every wish I could ask for. I whispered my gratitude into the stillness instead, went inside to wrap myself in blankets and silence, and I knew.

I would never have known to ask for half of the gifts I’ve been given.

Slam

The days race toward the finish line, you long for end goal but panic that you won't have packed all your pieces before you reach it, what a cruel reward. Trudge through the Post-its on the pages, trying to answer all the question marks with poetry but coming up with grating fortune cookie translations. Remind yourself to put one foot in front of the other, even a small step is better than no step at all, and then suddenly there it is: all the ducks line up and recite the story how it was made to be told. You throw out pages, entire chapters of canon but it doesn't matter, you found a better truth, you sing a sweeter song. I see the finish line again and know I arrive at it differently than I thought, but I will arrive at it and that is the part that matters; that is the part you will remember. I pulled a note out of the envelope this morning and I didn't know what it meant then but I know now. Try as I might I cannot control everything; try as I might I still have to humble myself at the feet of the Unknown, today I found an answer I didn't even know I was looking for and it answered questions I had taken for lost causes.

(these tracks are only to show me
where I've been
they don't tell me where I have
to go)

One foot in front of the other. I promise you you will arrive.

With Feeling

Don't make a backup plan. 
Have nowhere to fall. 
Nothing to catch you.  
If the landing is soft, 
you will fall. 

If the abyss is deep and 
dark and 
impossible  

You will leap. 

Humbles

A full moon climbs the zodiac, quiet, unassuming, in peace. I sit on the back patio, listening to starlight, asking for granted wishes but really only spending time with the Universe, it's enough. A month draws to a close; last night I booked a return ticket and it reminds me there's an entire life out there waiting for me. I've only been playing hide and seek, and everything I stowed away for the sublet will lie there waiting, a little dustier perhaps but still unchanged. When I say I am glad to have known you, I mean it. When I say I am grateful for this opportunity to break and mend, I mean it more than I knew when I asked for it. I sat staring at the stars wishing one might fall, but the best wishes we grant ourselves, it just takes a little work, it just takes offering up your own beating heart on a slab, out there in the open, vulnerable, trembling, brazen enough to believe it may survive what unknowns may come, and not just survive but grow into something better than what it was before, and here's the thing, here's the thing, everything worth pursuing is terrifying as hell. That's how you know your heart is out there. The heart breaks and breaks but is not broken. I moved into a quiet basement in the desert not knowing what I would find, but here's the thing: when you go into the dark with a searchlight, what you end up finding is always another piece of yourself you didn't know you had missed.

The Universe doesn't simply grant you wishes. You make your dreams come true, and just humbly give the credit away.

Nods

The temperature continues to plummet, you run down
 an empty Brooklyn street in the middle of the night 
praying for a car but also laughing so that's what 
you'll remember. You were the best thing to happen 
to me in 2017 lingers in your eardrums, wraps itself 
around your drunken sleep, there's confetti stars on 
your eyelids and you part reluctantly with a year 
that's torn at your insides but strengthened your 
heartbeat and 2018 is cold and scary now but you are 
ready to make it grow you are ready to turn it 
into 
a 
fucking 
jungle  

This pot is equal parts water 
and gasoline.

the Middle

(There's a silence in the country you never get used to. A slow steady breathing of grass and heartland, of the way we were and the way we'll never be anything else. My senses stagnate, I forget what it is to tingle in fireworks. One late summer evening I arrived in New York City, innocent and excited but somehow full of the knowledge that nothing would ever be the same now, how right I was.

I stay here, in this quiet countryside, I'll bide my time and do the work, but soon I must pack my words and return to the noisy avenues where my heart can rest; I've lost so much in this life, my love, but if it means I can come home to your steady embrace, I will want for nothing in the end. The notes amass, remind me what's waiting on the other side:

I also had a dim idea that if I walked the streets

of New York by myself at night something of the 

city's mystery and magnificence might rub off on

to me at last.)

Passin' Me By

Monday morning arrives, all fresh faced bright eyed sunrise over the mountains, a stack of clean slates and ignorant energy. I wipe the Sunday night fallout from the walls of my heart, from behind my eyelids, I try to take deep breaths even as my lungs are rusty with disuse. Peel away all the have-tos that amassed, all the returns to other people's distractions and thinking too much about what to do instead of doing it. What remains is simple in form, not pretty, not particularly appealing, I sit in an oversized college sweatshirt with my hair akimbo, the only thing that exists is this strange space where the story is everything, and nothing else, truly matters. I pull a note from the envelope, realize the quote means more now than just the words I've read before:

"I'm writing a novel," I said. "I haven't time
to change out of this and into that."

High Desert

There's an emptiness that lingers when the novelty wears off. A darkness lies in wait, it circles your fortress looking for soft spots, for weak links in the chainmail; turn away for a second and it twists the knife in your chest. I stand silent at a precipice; is it asking me to jump? Everything slips through your fingers, this is just a vacation from reality, I miss New York so my lungs ache and fear, again, I am on a limb that will not carry me. 

But remember: it will pass. 

Look up. 

The canopy is waiting for you. 

Crooked Creek

Sunny day, the little old school bus bumps up the map, as it turns from paved road to dirt road, from hillside to steep mountain and if it can't make this turn it's over. It's too late to turn around, you've committed to this insanity, in the wilderness no one can hear you die, but when you reach that summit and all the world stretches out around you and not a soul in sight how quiet the voices in your head. I make endless cups of coffee, I sit on an old log and stare at snow-capped mountains and the valley below, listen to the sounds of nothing, fall asleep in a sun-drenched cot with the emergency exit hatch open, beat poetry falling from my fingers as I do. I came up this mountain, I write to myself, and I don't know why. I think perhaps I have to sit here until I do. Flip through pages of Kerouacian rambles, find my own scribbled handwriting nodding in agreement, years of knowing the wisdom of the dharma, years of understanding the Word and the Road and the Truth how they meld; I drove down the mountain eventually, terrifying death trap in first gear and all the baubles within shaking loose from their holds, but the coffee cups remained firm, the lucky penny in the cup holder, the music in my ears and the breath in my lungs. Sometimes we don't know what we're looking for but isn't that just the thing? The miracle is we realize what it is once we find it.

Keep your eyes open
The secret is here, somewhere.

Re:mind

I woke with a start, torn from strange dreams of last minute flights by a persistent alarm and in the darkness I couldn't remember where I was. The quiet country nights mess with my urbanite head, I'm lost and all out of sorts in the stillness, I get too much sleep. The sun rose slowly over the snow-capped mountains as I tried to align whatever bones might build me for a day. Sometimes I seem unable to listen to the voice inside even as it yells and screams and drags its nails across my lungs, how is life a constant process of relearning? Again and again the Universe tells me truths; again and again I forget and let other dictate my path according to their ideals. But the sun rose again over the mountains today, it does not give up in the face of the unknown so neither should I. I sat in the space I have built for myself and pulled another note from the envelope. The little voice inside my chest grew quiet, nodded only and pointed to the paper:

(cajsa, you have felt the madness
rage in your blood, you have seen
delirium, you have known the 
universe in words; do not doubt,
ever, that it is your path.
everything else will be alrig ht
as long as you write. 
                       so do it.)

Future Perfect

 Well, said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop 
and think. Because although eating honey was a very good thing 
to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it 
which was better than when you were, but he didn't know 
 what it was called.”

Speak

A day disappears in useless apathy. Heartbreak pummels my insides, it darkens even the bright, sunny  desert day, and the words fall from my listless arms, seeping into my quiet chair and leaving me heavy with emptiness. A small girl stands behind the screen saver, she knows I know she's there and waits patiently for my return. I see her from the corner of my eyes, mouth I'm sorry as I return to the cinder block around my ankles, choosing the distraction over over the work at hand. I go to sleep early, decide to start fresh in the morning. At dawn, take a deep breath and pull a small piece of paper from the envelope. Laugh and send my gratitudes to the day:

NO EXCUSES.

Returns

Early in the morning, I climbed the same mountain again to say my farewells, not a cloud in the sky and an entire valley stretching out around me: how different the path in clarity. Now there is a metaphor, I snickered to myself, as I sat at the top of the hill and spoke to the city below. It took a while, but we made friends at last, didn't we? It took a few thousand miles, a few thousand breaths, it took a persistent beating heart but here we are, the sun shining, the sea quiet. I drove through the city this weekend and knew it, remembered it, I built a map of all the years between us and saw that I didn't have to be angry anymore. I am happy here, she said, and I knew she meant it; how can you carry a grudge against something that bathes those you love in such peace? I drove out of the city in the late morning, Santa Ana winds carrying me back into the desert; I drove and drove until the sun set behind me, until the stars multiplied across the great American night and I knew my way again. Returned to the little nook where my words lay waiting, pulled a large note out of the envelope I'd left:

...and in the midst of all the uncertainty, in all the things I adore about my life in Stockholm, I long for New York so my heart aches. Like if I could just come home, maybe everything won't be okay, but at least I'll know the soles of my feet
are burning.

(Malibu)

(The thing is, I have to let you go. I have to let go all the things I’m losing anyway, they weren’t my treasures to hold. I sat at the edge of the water, at the other end of the land which I had crossed to see this very place, to wrap my head around what it was and what it would look like now, when everything is different. The ocean twisted and turned and beat itself into towering waves against me, as if to offer no answer, no consolation, and maybe that was exactly the point. Maybe that’s exactly what you get when you cross thousands of miles to solve a riddle that refuses capture. As I stood in the surf, a new story told itself to me, I laughed into the saltwater and ran to write it down before it slipped away with the tide. The ocean takes, and takes, and takes, but then it gives again, and you cannot choose the gifts, only choose to receive them and make something of what you have been given. This journey is mine and mine alone. You have other miles that require crossing, so I have to let you go. There must be other treasures, somewhere.)

Musing

When I wake, a squirrel sits in the palm tree outside. Everyone is out of place. We hiked to the top of the mountain to see the world stretch out below but all we saw were clouds and the feet before us. It’s a metaphor, we said and laughed, and it took us an hour longer to get down than up. 

The saccharine smile that hides in my western upbringing comes out again, beaming at servers and strangers, effusive in politeness and banter, I can’t take her seriously but she fits right in with the Santa Monica boulevard crowds, tossing her blond curls and nodding at the ways of the industry. Over dinner, we speak of leaving Williamsburg before it was what it’s become. I had a rent controlled apartment you know, kept it when I went out here but I had to let it go and then I never looked back. You wonder if you ever got tired of New York where you could possibly go. You don’t have to think about it, now. Take a deep breath. 

Be here now. 

You can’t see further than where your feet stand, anyway. 

You Worry, Child

It rains where it never rains, the temperature soared 60 degrees and I peeled layers of clothing before flying down into the palm tree valley and they say somewhere just beyond lies the ocean. There is much to say, and once the cocktail wears off I will say it, once the miles land in my muscles I will tell you all about it, because today I laughed and cried in the same breath and I saw the Truths of an entire universe laid out before me, surely you do not expect a person to stay quiet with the enormity of Life on their tongue?

We had so many drinks, you had so many miles, first we will sleep. The cicadas sing you a lullaby, this heart beats you a rhyme to which you may rest, today you saw the whole world at your feet and the only Word I had was wow.

It's just motion, and it's just time

I load the car, pack my bags, set alarms, set my sights.

Today everything came together, today a story closed itself and I knew, I really knew, in that way you only can when you turned all the other noise down and listened only to the little voice at the very bottom of your heart, that if I can do this with the rest of my life it will be enough (although the voice says it will be everything), and it is the most breathtaking drug. I ran along the water with a laugh in my chest, spending the miles recounting my gratitudes, and how many they were, how many gifts I have been given lately and I had no idea until they sat within my skin. I load the car, pack my bags, set alarms, set my sights. I arrange the leftover papers on my desk, pull out a stray from the pile.

how much would it be to buy a used car
  in Kansas these days?

fuck it, let's find out.

My cup runneth over. I wanted you to know.

on my Parade

I wake long before dawn, toss and turn watching messages come in from other time zones. Some are sweet, some are devastating, and I lie awake wondering at how life is. In this bubble at the edge of civilization, I imagine myself beyond reach, but I fall asleep again and dream heart-wrenching dreams of love and loss until an alarm shakes me out of it. In the morning light, I feel soft, vulnerable, without my suit of armor, this coffee strengthens me, these words build me but at the end of the day we are nothing more than soft flesh easily bruised. I wonder how we can ever dare to love when we know the risk. Turn to words instead, let them move me, let them build me. It meant something different once but now I put my faith in words instead:

(not like a corral: like a wave)

Damn Straight

Wake early again, stretch and yawn and breathe mindfulness into your waking limbs. When we drove through the canyon there was snow on the ground, they send you pictures of apple picking and upstate fall foliage and it's 85 degrees here what are you doing? I check the forecast for California, begin to pack a bag.

I lost my words today, forgive me, I let myself be led astray and I swore I wouldn't, you built this treehouse around my piles of paper and I left the nest too soon, how my wings ache, I knew better. But the fact is my compass knows true north, and it is freedom; the fact is my heart knows its dream and it is this one, the one I see with my eyes open. Everything falls apart and burns to the ground but I have packed my bag and I will not be standing still now. These are the cards I was dealt and I will play them till I die or it dies in me, there is no other way and there never was. Magic runs through my fingertips, it hums in my skin and sings in my spine, I saw the straight and wide path and I turned right off it. Pull a piece of paper out of the envelope:

life is too short to be ordinary. 

Signed

The temperature plummets. Scores of birds gather and fly south, they know there's no point in beating this dead horse, everything is ending. I went for a run along the snowy mountain and watched my breath take shape outside of me, this breath which tries so hard to center me even as I want nothing more than to fly away into the ether, I pounded out the miles in silence, with only a nearby eagle for company. The outside world grabs to steal my attention, tearing gashes into the lives of those around me, tempting me with alluring new promises, doing everything it can to distract me from the work at hand, the blinking cursor at the edge of a messy page. I wonder if it's possible to isolate oneself even more, but the secret they won't tell you is you never can outrun yourself. I see the exit signs along the road, itch to take one and see where it leads, but I return instead to the basement room where I am staying and begrudgingly tear a piece of paper from the pile.

(are you present? be here now.)

and I have nothing to retort.

On Life

I know you don't want to hear this, she says, but I have some bad news. Your heart breaks a thousand times over, how entire mountains tumble with time and we don't know how to rebuild them with just these hands, just this frail, soft love, how nothing is invincible. The clouds hang low on the mountains, I drink another cup of coffee, not yet ready to leave the room, not yet ready to start a day, how do the days keep moving even as everything else is shattered to pieces? Perhaps it's a comfort. Another day, another sliver of paper from the Universe, I wipe my tears:

do not fail your dream when it needs you most. 

Thank you.

Valley Below

Sunday is church day and it's safe to assume everyone sitting in this restaurant is okay with how much we are swearing. Sweet old beautiful voices that have lived in my ears far more years than I ever had to live without them. I remembered, later, how some of those people were responsible for saving my life, and there's no way to explain that to somebody. There's no thank you card big enough for the gratitude. Still, I returned through the mountain pass with a rain cloud on my shoulders, how far away the work at hand, how dry the ink at my fingertips. I laced my sneakers, remembered my breaths; the sun set in a fiery eruption behind the peaks, I pulled a sheet of paper from the envelope, shook with the gratitude that spills over from inside my chest:

knock me down I get the fuck back up again. 

Foliage

It snows in the mountains. I drove winding roads into woods on fire, all yellow aspens and trembling red maple leaves, and tried to remember who I am. Five days in exile, already I falter. An old, used version of myself reappears in my muscles, she sits in my spine and reminds me who I was, what I left, it's not so much a reminder that we can never escape our pasts as a kind nudge of how far we can come. He sends stories of the city, it feels a million miles away but my heart aches for it like I lose the needle on my compass when I stay away too long. My father shakes his head, how nothing makes sense to him, and I realize finally that it doesn't have to. As long as I remember my direction, as long as I stick to it and follow the steady voice in my ear, I am always going to be better off than when I fall off the map when someone else shakes it. I pull a long strip of paper from the envelope. Can't help but laugh.

Remember New York sees you when no one else does, and loves you at your most unloveable. Love it as recklessly and for as long as you possibly can. 

On Trust

Early afternoon in a sun-drenched basement window,  I sat huddled at a desk with quiet tears streaming down my face. A rough draft full of ink squiggles and Post-Its lay in front of me, years worth of magic and struggle sandwiched between its pages, a lifetime of lessons so sweetly placed in its hands for safe-keeping. I woke this morning with nothing but question marks, persistently complaining into handwritten journal pages I don't have the answers. I don't even know what answers I'm looking to find, while a steady voice in the back of my head countered every attempt at avoidance by relentlessly whispering trust the process. Sometimes you have to let yourself choose to keep working, sometimes you have to put your ego and fears aside, even for just a little while, and carry on despite them. Because eventually, as I sat there in the rubble of my creative flotsam, a solution appeared, a story unfolded, an answer wrote itself right in front of me, and for a short moment I dared believe that everything would come together after all. A small girl stood at the edge of the last page, waving. I pulled out a piece of paper from the envelope.

(somewhere along the line
the pearl would be handed  
                  to me.)

And it is beautiful in my hand.

Day 3

I forget the workings of time, the ways of the real world, I rise in the dark and breathe only in the currents of imagination, piles of clothes and paper and half drunk coffee cups amass around my body, it's a dream. I pull out another sheet of paper from the envelope, nod.

I laughed in the night and thought
nothing else matters, 
and nothing ever will.

Balance

A day of desert sunshine is followed by another night of storm. Lightning explodes behind the peaks, silhouetting them the panoramic windows washed over with rain. At last there is noise, at last something cuts through the quiet; I sleep too heavy, I forget to stir. The to do lists look so strange now, they only tell me to do that for which my heart longs, they are more gifts than demands. When I stray too far from the desk, from the pile of papers and words and intricate swirls of imagination to which my entire soul is tethered, an itch in my feet pulls me back. How is it possible to live such a life, and have it be one's very own?

I know I am broken, and shattered, and a pile of debris, but for this short, sweet moment of respite, I am allowed to exist outside this body, outside this heart, for a short, sweet moment I am only these words and what I can do with them. I asked the Universe for a challenge and it gave me a storm, but it did not send me to the ocean without a life raft, and I will not drown.

The valley is dark now,
yes,
but the sun rises
also.

Prologue

Dark clouds rolled in over the valley, lightning bouncing against the mountains and pulling thunder behind it like a chariot; I slept like a baby. Before dawn, I woke again to the complete silence of the Great West, soft tendrils of sunlight sifting through the desert grass and turning the mountainside foliage to gently waking embers. Another day, another gift, I whispered into my coffee, unable to take in the magnitude of such an offer. All this, for me? I opened a window, let the morning breathe for me, as words and worlds stretched and danced around my head. All this, for me. I reached my hand into the envelope again, longing for every minute of the rest of the day to come:

If the Word isn't mean to be 
my salvation, 
why does it call me so?

Do the Thing

Jet lag jumps on my bed in the morning, squeals at me to get up. The world outside the windows is pitch black still, quiet. I tip toe into the kitchen, make coffee in silence. Stand on the back porch to say good morning to the grainy hushed light that yawns and stretches over the mountains in the distance. The air is cool, it is autumn. Meditate, interrupted only by the thought I am free; it makes me smile, how can I possibly wish it away? Not 24 hours in, and the desk is already a creative mess of paper and pens, of post-its and coffee mugs, a pleasant hum settles in my gut and I open a window, as the first rays of sunlight streak across the field outside, setting the straw on fire. 

I reach my hand into the envelope of words, take a deep breath, pull out another scrap of paper:

If I do this every day for a year, 

where will I be 

a year from now?

Ok. 

With a View

The room is impossibly large, uninhabited and clean, a blank slate of a room with no curtains. I drag the desk from a corner to the windows, large panoramic windows and no distractions. The view holds an entire valley, an entire mountain range in early fall colors, an entire landscape of my own imagination, it's breathtaking. I pile books and papers and notepads on the desk, hang a painting above it. I rummage about, trying to get comfortable, trying to let the cool air sink into the soles of my feet, here is the gift I give myself, here is the precipice of a dream, he asked me how I got into writing and I said I didn't, writing just chose me at some point and I had to follow it. It's a pretentious answer made less so only by being true. I open an envelope full of notes to self, jewels of words that have littered my paper piles for months and years and built themselves a home; it's a veritable fortune cookie, I decide to pick one a day and let it guide me. I close my eyes, run my fingers across the thin sheets, pull out a small scrap and look at it, smiling:

do the thing.

Ok.