things to get: a job, a friend, a wooden cabin, a garden

Once you realize you are the only thing standing in the way of your own happiness you feel quite stupid.

to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result

another bumbling evening in the cool and awkward twilight i found myself mealy-mouthed and introducing myself as a film maker to strangers. i conversed at what i thought was a regular volume, but was interrupted by the excitement of strange cheeses and chickens, people turned away from the middle of my sentences and i spoke into the vine and ivy covered backyard like i'd intended to address it all along.
then a real artist showed up with half her head shaved and tattoos and she spends all of her time in a studio. some of them live in a canyon. some of them have two homes. some of them teach others. and i feel like i've trespassed. so i sneak to the front yard. careful to close the gate because of the chickens. the front yard with the flat wooden swing. and i am back and forth. the half moon above, blocked by a skeletal branch, now free. then blocked again. and the spring smell budding behind me. we are oil and water. i will keep trying to mix us, but we'll settle and separate on either side of that rusty fence.

because you can't give too much away.

i have behaved as a spoiled and entitled individual and i have many regrets.

i am forever grateful. and the sunsets have been so loving and pink lately. there were rabbits in a hole in the yard getting warm because they'd just been born, and crickets and frogs in the morning.

but when i'm alone i am savage.
"i don't want anything from anyone," i say. and i say it enough times until it sinks in. and when i think i deserve a break, or a friend, or another beer, i say it again. one day soon it will stick. like the years piling up. it will be true and keep me safe.

the house with the prism in the window

Before I forget, the name of the street was hard to remember and I would make a wrong turn. But I’d eventually get there. The house right in the middle of a hill. A few more feet and it would’ve been sideways. Up the cement stairs to the landing where there are small shrines with skeletons of starfish, cow’s heads, nautical themed desert planter boxes with small cactuses flowering. Inside and a large bell deep resonates against the door.

It smells like garlic and chicken all the time. There is always a pot of soup on. In the kitchen you can look out the window through a prism shaped like a pyramid and see the city lights refracted a million times below. You might as well be on top of the hill after all. Back down the hallway and to the right, past the room where a man stretches cow and goat hide to make drum heads for his Congo classes, there is a small hole in the wall. Inside there is a Virgin Mary surrounded by dried roses, Christmas lights and sugar skulls. Up the stairs where a bike hangs precariously over your head and a sharp right up up up and you are in her loft.

She lives there, playing Mississippi John Hurt and punk music from Peru circa 1965. She must create. Her hands are either making something or wrapped around a glass of wine. Long, thin fingers. Skin like someone left the porch light on in August. Gold and brown Her dad is Chinese, her mom is White, same hands around the wine. But she has her father’s almond eyes. Black hair to her waist. She doesn't need to, but she wears huge earrings or long necklaces with wooden beads and bright colors. When she does Tai Chi, it is like someone is pulling her with puppet strings.

Sometimes she walks railroad tracks to find treasures. “look,” she holds up a rusted out tin can. Beans, PBR, maybe? “I can totally use this.” She sets it on top of several others to make a crude shooting station. Sometimes she buries dead animals to dig them up and use their skeletons later.
There is a wood saw in the corner to cut circles and gear-shapes. Once, she made a seat in the form of Shiva, all arms around the sitter so they could feel Glory. She salvages shells, feathers, rocks, from the nearby nature preserve and old saws and boxes thrown out on the side of the road. She paints and dyes and cuts and sews. Working at the coffee shop full time, she brings home doilies and brews them overnight in grounds, then pieces them carefully around a bird skeleton and some dried petals, acorns, and pine cones.

Every corner holds a wonder. A kimono clad figure in a carved-out cigarette box. A terrifying ash tray shaped like dentures. A ray fish preserved in formaldehyde years ago and tacked up on the wall, spiny tail shining in the lamplight.
Liz never opened up, but she didn’t have to. I could spend the evening making things out of leather and twine and she never asked. We were quiet and strange. Nothing wasted.

some people collect records, i collect disappointing evenings.

At a party last night and I couldn’t stop looking at girls right straight in the teeth. All of their mouths were different. Some had small, pointy daggers. Some had more gums than calcium deposits. Some had shiny white pearls. They laughed and smiled and talked to me and I pretended to be perfectly normal, staring at their mouths.
I went downtown to look for a beautiful, careless idiot. I pulled on my red lace mittens and clopped down the street, worn heels dragging. Numb hands. Too cold. I peered into dark bars and backed out before any stranger could touch me on the back to say, “esscuse me.” Around the third wood-paneled, warm hole-in-the-wall, I wandered in deep. I slipped between the people talking too loudly, the standers, the hangers on, then I floated back toward the door. Someone said, “We got a wanderer,” right next to my ear. A bicycle bell on the street and I kept my head down. Five blocks to the car, I pulled my purse inside of my jacket and zipped up. No one would mug a pregnant lady; especially one who doesn’t make eye contact. Seem to be stuck again. A record scratch or a shitty needle and I am playing out the same over and over. Over and over.

sorry about being late.

you came running around the side of the house like a puppy all eager and silent and jumping over bushes.
then you sat on me. you got lake-colored eyes. sometimes brown, sometimes coke bottle green, sometimes in between.
i cried and freaked out more times around you than anyone else. that might mean something, but i can't figure out what.
it was so hot outside that we did not make it all the way down the road.
instead we sat next to your ice-producing air conditioner which, through its own puddle creation and electric nature, tried to kill you.
i am glad it did not kill you.

sister.

she was with her kids and they were teenagers now. all ready to cuss and punch. and for some reason she took their disdain personally, even though it was that time in a kid's life when it's natural to hate everything, or so i thought.
but i was walking with the boys dockside, and one kept stomping around. the younger told him, "you'll break your mother's back" and he said, "good." and kept on stepping on cracks.
they'd come from the desert and kept asking about cicadas and the different types of trees.
she was separated from them most of the time because her husband went crazy during the war and left her.
the eighteen year difference must be what does it. i have no choice but to look for her approval. even when she's all bleach blonde, fake tan, pancake-make-uped and doing her nails. cotton candy lipstick and layers of mascara. she could go without anything on her face and be beautiful. but it must be the job at the generic american food restaurant that demands she wear a mask like this.
the boys chose to ride in my car and the next time she was with me she put a cigarette between her cotton candy lips and said, "i think my boys hate me." i wanted to tell her it was not true.
it was so hot that the atlantic looked steamy. we climbed a sand dune and the sea oats were as still as the sunshine.
the older one ran straight toward the water. the younger started after him, then as if he'd entered a flashback and was six years old again (before the divorce, before smoking and pain pills, before either of them knew how to really hate) turned and yelled, "Look Mama, the ocean!"