into dust

Talk is rhythm and your silences are carefully measured, working like punctuation among stream upon stream of words. I have an excellent memory and although it sounds self-gratifying I assure you it is anything but. I remember almost everything worth remembering with the utmost clarity, re-feeling layer by layer until it takes a vivid form. But I wish I didn't. Memory is a creative process and I often wonder if I am truly remembering or if I'm simply creating from a template of stored images. I'd grow really excited and ask: Do you remember when? and then stop because I know you don't. You'd look at me funny, grin a little perhaps and then rub the spaces in between my knuckles.

Do you remember the first time feeling _______? Scary isn't it? Terrifying and exhilarating at the exact same point. It gave me such a rush but I felt like throwing up after. So where did all of that go? Dormancy soon gives way to decay. I would stay up at night wondering how you felt, tracing the watermarks on my ceiling. Hyperventilating in naivety and optimism. I would think until I fell asleep and when I woke up I would think some more.

You were a dream but I couldn't sleep much longer.

Angela! Holds a grudge! Over.... nothing.

The Walkmen are slowly but steadily becoming one of my favorite bands of all time. To commemorate this pleasant little revelation I sifted through their mumbly, sometimes incoherent lyrics to come up with my very own list of favorite Walkmen one liners. Some of them sweet, some of them regretfully bitter, but all of them sharing the commonality of being stark and heartfelt. The process of choosing was basically me listening to a particular line then stopping dead in my tracks(ha) and going Oh Shit I really love this band.


When I used to go out I'd know everyone I saw, now I go out alone if I go out at all. 
- The Rat, Bows+Arrows

It's dark, oh man, driving through central Michigan, listening to the country station and wondering where I stand. 
- The Witch, Heaven

Could she be right when she repeats, I am the lucky one? 
- Juveniles, Lisbon

The music's loud in your room turn it down, there's a neighbor who can't take it anymore.
- New Year's Eve, Bows+Arrows

And I sing myself sick about you. 
- Song for Leigh, Heaven

Throw me a line, the windows are shaking and so are my bones, the world's going round, throw me a rope.
- I Lost You, You&Me

So take my hand, all the players in the band they can always find, always find some number that we know. 
- Canadian Girl, You&Me

There is still sand in my suitcase, there is still salt in my teeth, I kissed her in the window she covered up her face. 
- Donde Esta La Playa, You&Me

You don't love me just the kissing, don't trust the facts trust the fiction. 
- The Love You Love, Heaven

and my personal favorite at this moment,

I was holding on to you for lack of anything to do. 
- Angela Surf City, Lisbon

Mortality

There is an unhealthy preoccupation over what happens to us when we die. What's stranger is that we don't often dwell on the eternity that preceded our existence but instead devote an awful amount of time and thought to where we go after we die. How would you comfort a dying person? is a question I've asked myself over and over. With absolute clarity I should hope. There is some value in false comfort and reassuring the dying that there is some infinite wonder waiting for them. But it is infantile at best, and I find it disheartening that childish assurances are lobbied around the hospital bed without a shred of mediated thought. But the question remains, how would you comfort the mother/sister/brother/friend/father dying right before you? By telling them that the life they lived was enough, that they need not fear the unknowable and that there is nothing more they should feel they need. That a life lived with people that love them honestly and deeply should more than suffice. That I feel, would be an unbeatable comfort. For the ones that love you the most don't reside above you, nor do they shy away when you need them. The ones that love you will be before your very eyes - to touch, to feel, to appreciate one last time. A beauty far greater than anything that can be promised because its tangibility is finally clear.


No such thing as heaven for you then? is another question I ask myself. Far from it. I reject the heaven of fairy tales and logistical inconsistencies, the heaven teased to you by the gullible and easily impressionable, the heaven which demands unconditional love and regulates that through fear. The heaven which I believe in is here on earth, in the people and in the loves I love. That for me, will ever be enough.

-

I am terrified as I write all of this down because it unmistakably signals a staggering loss of faith. Yes, I am afraid and it would be more than easy to fall back on the stories I was told as a child. But I feel that there is so much more to be discovered if I allow myself to be governed by knowledge instead of fear. Perhaps I've lost my "faith", but in its absence I've gained insight.

time's arrow

You see with increasing clarity the life you lived
As you walk backwards step by step
You understand as you grow younger
That change is a symptom of desire.

The wrinkles iron themselves out
And the value in your head seeps back
Into the muscles a pumping vessel
Reinvigorates a youthful flicker.

But time's arrow rewards as it takes
And the insights are struggling embers
Doused by youth and rekindled
Stuttering only with age.

And into love you stride
For what burns bright must be purveyed
And from love you recede
Relieved but at once more afraid.

Ashamed of regret almost
As if regret was against your nature
No point you tell yourself
As you confuse comfort and condolence.

So once more young and once more unafraid
Till time takes a measure of you away.