“When all’s said and done, all roads lead to the same end. So it’s not so much which road you take, as how you take it.” -Charles de Lint
“Some roads aren’t meant to be travelled alone” -A Proverb
“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.” -Ayn Rand
When I was 18 I wrote a poem about the town I live in. It was filled with cynical descriptions of stereotypical ideas and basic assumptions I made about everyone around me. I centered it around the river that flowed through the area, The Clackamas. I remember my obsession with the river never really faded. I still see it as another living creature trying to get out of here. Most of the people I know don’t mind being stagnant, sitting still. They are more like lakes, ponds, maybe even water troughs for horses. I feel more like a river, constantly moving, heading somewhere bigger and possibly better.
I’m constantly on the move, a gypsy of a different age. I try to follow the mindset that nothing can hold me back. Gypsies don’t fit in, they don’t settle, but most of all they break all the rules.
I’m biting at my nails, the rain a tumbling mess outside. Twenty mile per hour wind tossing leaves and sticks against the house. Life is a vivid blur of silent motion. The cat’s breathing, up and down of her gray little chest. Her paws are tucked over her white nose, her eyes two little elongated Vs.
I want to walk outside and stand in the rain. Let it fall over me, chill me to the bone, like a refreshing shower after a hot summer’s run.
This is the part where the beginning ends.
This is the end of where I just began.
Has it always been hard for you
Are you scared of the truth
The truth can kill, he once said.
He told me many things. He pointed at stars and named the ones he knew: Pleiades, Vega, and Polaris. The brighter dots he named as planets. “The largest planet seems the brightest tonight,” he would say, as if I didn’t know which one was Jupiter. He’d find my hand in the darkness, the stars too entrancing to look away. “This is the way life should be.”
On any other day I’d have a Polaroid picture in my brain of what happened next. But the thief has faded that old picture. The stars aren’t as distinct now. His eyes not the same gorgeous blue. His smile nothing but a shape in a vague memory lit by the headlights of an old, rusted pickup. His hand in mine, no longer a feeling, just two fuzzy people in a different time. The old photograph that sat on my desk is long since packed away into a box and stored. My presence has not graced his resting place since the leaves fell that August day seven years ago. He does not visit me in dreams. His face does not appear in the crowd. The songs do not remind me of what we had.
But that’s what happens when we age.
Youth is tasting everything as it is. Love is soft, warm and enveloping. Heartbreak is raw, tearing, so real. Death is the cold darkness taking over.
Time is the forgetting, the peace, the acceptance, the moving on.
Is it always just right for you
Cuz Im losing my mind
Sittin here watchin you cry
He would say it’s all in my head. The voices. The memories. The fears. It could all be in my head. He would laugh at me and say, “Who are you to forget where you come from?” He would point to the path, the dark, littered path that I didn’t want to follow, and I would see the footsteps. I would see the proof that I walked it anyway, whether I wanted it or not.
He would fall like the rain. He would breathe like the wind. He would cut through me like the cold. He would be everything at once. He would be nothing at all. He would take me in and spit me out.
I would fall apart. I would wonder where my life would go. I would let the tears fall. I would be vulnerable to the pain. I would do things my way for once. I would be strong.
I wouldn’t ask permission to live.
He would be the voice, the memory, the fear. He’s in my head.
Don’t let the music die.
We’re playin songs from different times.
The time has come, where the pieces finally find their places, little soldiers marching into battle. It’s a battle against what is wrong and right, what I should do and what I shouldn’t do. They will line up, their stances battle ready, they will shout as the war begins. They will fight their hardest, until they fall one by one. Each piece will try as hard as they can to win the war. And then they will fail. The birds will circle, the sun will grow higher in the sky, and the bodies will litter the field. They will be pecked apart, until they are nothing but bones. The blood will soak into the ground, the rain will wash it away, and over time even those bones will become dust.
I’ll let you say goodbye
On another day,
But not today.
On another day,
But not today.
She’s the color in my eyes. She’s the breath in my lungs. She’s the song I sing. She would be the little blue bird that lands on the chair in my yard, and makes a little sound then spreads it’s tiny wings to the gray sky. She is the hope.
There is faith. There is love. It flows in my veins. There was a sinking ship, a tiny little boat in the vast ocean. The mast was broken, the waves battered the sides. And then the sun came out, dried the wooden deck and calmed the seas. There is a piano in the woods, the keys broken, the chords out of tune. There is freedom.
She is the autumn sun on the crisp fallen leaves. She is the cracks in the pavement. She is the mortar. She is the clay. She is the strength. She is the lies. She is the truth.
The truth can kill.
I am always the one to give
And you call me a thief
Say I’m stealin your time away
I’m just waiting to see
If you’ll wait for me
I keep having dreams about babies.
I’m not sure why. Last night I dreamed I had a 3 month old son, whom I kept forgetting everywhere I went. It was very weird. Part of me thinks it’s some weird mommy desire that’s just popping up right now. I know that I could not handle a kid right now, but I think that I like the idea of having one.
I’m not sleeping very well right now. I feel like I have a lot to say to everyone, and I hurt physically when I sleep. I really need a bed, as in a real bed. That would be nice.
It’s 74 degrees outside and it is raining. Welcome to Oregon. The weather has been it’s bipolar self, matching my mood perfectly. It’s always like this.
I woke up today feeling the need to change. It’s something I have said a million times over, but I may follow through this time. I want to go back to the person I was back in the day. However, without a time machine I’m forced to improve on the person I am now; harder than it seems.
I don’t do drugs. I don’t smoke unless I drink, and I don’t drink that much (anymore). I don’t have physical problems. I’m in decent shape; I can even say I’m a fairly attractive person on the outside. All my problems are internal. I need to change. My personality sucks. End of story.
I used to call myself a writer, because I felt I could establish a stronger relationship through the written word than I could in person. Maybe I was born lacking that gene that makes us capable of being good in social situations. Or it could be that I have a gene that makes me a bad choice for a friend. I really don’t know.
All I do know is this… It’s August 28, 2009 at 6:25 p.m. I am still living in the small town my parents brought me to when I was two years old. I’m in a relationship with a man I met two years ago, someone that I have gone through a lot with. I still go to school. I still hate my mother. I still have very few friends. I still say things I shouldn’t. I still make mistakes and learn from them. But I’m ready for a change, a big change. And this is where it starts. It starts now, and it starts with a choice.
So here goes, wish me luck.
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