music: cast away the clouds, rose melberg
mood: say peanut!

(this is mum in japan, i'm not sure when)

"little by little they grow and rise up, garbing themselves in various colours, glorious like the flowers in spring, and the spring itself rejoices and is glad at the beauty in which they are clothed." -komarios the philosopher and high priest instructs kleopatra in the divine and sacred art of the philosophical stone

i am craving the whiteness of blue sky clouds, december snow, blank pages. this, though my best friend wears summer dresses long past labour day and my strangers write chalk messages on the sidewalks. i am overwhelmed by just-because gifts: perfect bookplates, a zucchini muffin & your letters. sometimes, i take dinnertime walks through the south end neighbourhoods or sit cross-legged in empty playgrounds for the sadness it brings.
i have library-borrowed the handbook of english costume in the twentieth century 1900-1950. every morning, i consult a page at random and replicate it while i get dressed. i'm mid-way through midterms; studying hard means learning so much.
also, i turn twenty in less than two weeks. time is not scary as i'd thought, mostly i feel ageful (full of all my ages). i'm nowhere where i expected and that is all right. this closeness is not closeness, it's just a trick of standing near. as i stop seeking out my future, i begin to see where the next will lead me. oh, i have such sudden plans!

my dearest (unknown) ones,

.


.

mood: exploratory

(this is from us.)

serenade no. 1; you with your restless eyes
you spoke of something coming, maybe you knew it had already crawlen inside.
there is something secret about you, a perhaps kind of sorrow. it is not palpable but sitting so close i see the moth-holes in your sweater, you are distant.
someone will try to tell you, someone will turn and try to sell you water & stones.
your boots dance weightless across maple floorboards. you tell a joke and it is not funny. you weave such tapestries on steinway strings to turn the world symphonic.

holding out for double-umbrella days

music: the alison yip school for girls, woodpigeon

i will never grow up from this fear of missed moments, lost conversations, the words left unread. a friend once told me of an art installation in san-francisco where matchmaking questions were painted on sidewalks so the city-dwellers could purpose their routes (or routes) and find the destination of each other. but my blank corners are question marks and direction is always decision. for the times we find our faces, we must have so many near misses but all our parallels are hidden by concrete & steel. so i paste the scraps of my wonderings to these paths and i am mindful of my way. my half-hopes seem will enough to bring you near, i always discover the ones i am thinking.
this week, everyone seems tethered to school except me. i do have midterms and also papers (american dime novels, the essence of gold) but only in incidental ways. i clutch the periphery of my life as a blanket -- open books swirl round my room, post-library evenings are for adventuring, my empty days filled with yoga classes and café lunches. time is just make-believe.
everything is pumpkin-scented and damp with the rain. when i walk up the stairs home, there is such warmth in this place. now, i'm listening to the skylight storm and reading my grandmother's copy of 'the search after hapiness'. (august 10,1972 haworth - from the bookshop which was the drugstore where branwell bought his opium...) the sun has disappeared from this afternoon's sky. there are torn silk scarves, lengths of ribbon, cardigans, pens and books of poetry strewn across my careful bed.
i'm going to have tea and go see great aunt ida! loves, i wish you luck.

the unspeakable distances where you've been

music: annimystique, hot springs
mood: wakeful

the most frightening sound isn't the scratching, the most frightening sound is the blur of wingbeats inside stiff metal. softness and the tinny stove-pipe birdsongs. so i place palms against the surface, trying to hold your feathers and fear. the cranberry sauce cooling, pumpkin pie baking, leaves that are changing have all been forgotten. and i open glass-paned doors, pull out the waiting wood, brush away last year's ashes.
the weight of the sparrow falls right to my hands.

all weekend, we woke early and ate breakfast (homemade bread, cafe au lait) still in our pyjamas. we spent mornings exploring the city's novelties (a jigsaw hindu temple, grocery stores filled with foodstuffs we'd never imagined) or sitting at home, reading. we had tea on the porch and watched the wind and the garden falling into fall. and i listened carefully to travel stories i hadn't heard (the procession of beach-combed objects through a fancy greek hotel, balcony fireworks at the house in spain). and i promised to remember. rainy piano afternoon alone in an empty house, playing brahms waltzes over and again. i drew airplane-view treescapes and i dreamed good dreams. mum got back from europe for a morning walk by the lake and we talked, watched seagulls from below the bluffs. i left with many gifts: old photographs, a new dress, an already finished novel and inherited magic beans (each is filled with one hundred ivory elephants).
it was quite & quietly perfect.

your heart beats so fast before you fly.

listen: while you were sleeping, elvis perkins
& look: anything arthur rackham

now, your secrets are free

music: stand right there, laura peek & the winning hearts
mood: decadent

i cannot remember my dream from last night but there was an orchard full of wax fruits and i was walking there with you, and --

i am skipping through my days and staying far from your vicious subterfuge. our dinner parties are mainly meat, our words are mostly true and i am far too proud. (i sometimes become absent; i will always, always return.)

my world has fantastic, undiscovered smiles.

today after classes, i went downtown and i was a wanderer. i talked to the booksellers & librarians, blew dandelion wishes on citadel hill (my secrets, they are still expensive) and i watched the windblown strangers, hand in hand with their intentions. curled up in an armchair at second cup, i read 'a softer world' and it rained but i did not cry.
tomorrow's escape is welcome relief from the cherished spaces that begin to threaten and bruise with the mundane. don't you know it's bad luck to stay in one place for too long? a final look at alchemy and i will be gone, gone, gone. i am old enough to need taking care of and cannot wait to rush to the arms that are open and waiting.
instead of packing, tonite, i read short stories and drink champagne.

music: haley bonar
mood: tangled

sawdust restauraunts with oyster shells

reading: house of sugar, rebecca kraatz
listening: eggs, don brownrigg

(this is me & this is you.)

curiosity: burning beeswax candles will make you less allergic to cats.

fact: more than anything, i need to be home with my grandparents. i want to play cribbage, wander & weed the garden, drink tea on the porch and eat animal-shaped pancakes for breakfast.

truth: yellow leaves pasted to the rainy day concrete are your fool's gold. but i am seeking only what is true. you should have been more careful.

we're so unsure about it

listening: andrew bird & the mysterious production of eggs
dreaming: stupidly significant dreams about horses

stranger, there is a september tree in the public gardens that is blushing into autumn. its leaves slowly turn to the colour of rose petals...
i followed the harvest moon all around tonight; along igneous sidewalks, over angry seas. (you are the feeling of motion & the fact of standing still). the smell of burning leaves is all caught up with the night sky. from the hillside, satellite antennas look like distant castles & spotlights pour down the sides of office towers. this city never sleeps.
wait for me on street corners and when we meet, let's go right home. we'll drink tea and sit against the radiator, watching unsettling films with our tired, mid-week eyes.
these are days of small destruction; the chapel has gone missing from the cemetery on my way downtown. the footprint concrete floor has been laid bare, then piled high with withered blossoms and the torn trunks of cut down hydrangeas. i gathered the flowers & placed them on sweet, anonymous gravestones.
the wind keeps blowing; the world is stripped of colour.