“the adventure of the sun is the great natural drama by which we live,
and not to have joy in it and awe of it, not to share in it,
is to close a dull door on nature’s sustaining and
poetic spirit.”
The Outermost House, Henry Beston (1928)
[get out and enjoy today, my friends]
I, like many New Yorkers, do not have a lot of free time in a day. Usually I am at work until 11 pm, 6 or even 7 days a week. While this is not ideal, I have noticed in the last year that when I do get free time, I am much more motivated to use it wisely.
Tonight, for the first time in too long, I came home at 6 pm. Instead of watching TV or even cleaning, I took out my violin.
I had played all through high school and a bit in college, but it was always one of the many skills I had acquired that made me a desirable candidate for college, for the future. Like AP Biology, it was a badge to say hey, you want me around, I am well rounded *huge, fake smile*
As an adult, out of guilt I brought my violin to Brooklyn with me. I played it tonight, and my entire body is vibrating with relaxation and happiness.
I’m not the only one to feel these effects, either. You also don’t have to know how to play an instrument to get the benefits of music. Check out this story on NPR about the effect music has on the brain.
We all have talents and skills we let fall by the wayside because we have “grownup” jobs now. I say, don’t give them up. Did you used to like painting? Ceramics? Crafting? Knitting? Trumpet? Dance?
Do. It. It’ll bring you back to earth and make your brain happy and strong, too.
She wore her sports bra around the apartment –
left the door wide open.
He couldn’t tell if she was daring the world to look
or assuming the world would not.
Her confidence gave him vertigo –
He felt green with envy and diziness for the way life picked
her first, gave her aura an extra sheen.
Not that he wanted it, but that he had to witness it
Be near, but not close enough
to live inside it too.
Some weeks, he hid from her. Buried himself
in work, in other friends. He could not bear the sight
of her smiling, laughing, but not with him.
Other weeks, he walked through that open door
hoping to himself she was brazen
enough to cook ramen with her torso bare.
Green though he was, he could not stay away from the edge
of where their friendship would explode into… what?
It felt large – larger than the universe he studied, larger than space-time.
He needed time to figure it out, first. What equation
can calculate how love will change the experience
of waking up every morning?
Numbers and symbols and late night tapping at key boards, eyes
drowning in computer screens – all faded the second
she sauntered past his window, dreaming
probably
of flight.
Depression is a foreign country
a foreign country is a nickel
a nickel is 1957
1957 is almost a moon landing
a moon landing is New York style pizza
New York style pizza is emergency exits
emergency exits are adultery
adultery is someone else’s golden retriever
someone else’s golden retriever is shame
shame is window panes
window panes are water colors
that you mixed
into a murky brown or gray
after hours stuck inside on a rainy day
thinking that the opaque nature of color is
true love and a near death experience
a near death experience is Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley is first class stamps
first class stamps are worn out jeans
are black tea is old letters are shutters are Alcatraz
is white wine, January 22nd, scraped knees, a PhD,
homelessness,
hope:
the phone ringing.
He was mine.
Oh, the poison of that faint light from an iPhone screen.
The playful hair toss in his direction and the way he didn’t shut his eyes
and turn away.
The months I spent straining
convincing myself it was in my own mind,
that my mind could not be trusted – a whisper in my ear
the faint sound of wind, only.
The creeping sense that corrodes the looks
he gives you in the morning, between sheets.
I turned in on myself, criticizing my inability
to suffice.
Driven mad the most by dreams – he lives
with her. He holds her. Kissing her neck with all the tenderness
I had hoped would find its way to my navel,
shoulder, ankle, elbow.
Then came the hunger, the animal
creeping silently enough to avoid detection at first
then consuming me until all I wanted was what it wanted.
He was mine.
I wrote recently about the importance of coloring – from what I’ve seen around the world wide web, the idea is sure taking hold. To those hold outs, the skeptics – it isn’t a useless time. It’s akin to meditation, a way to bring yourself out of the vast expanse of mental time, space, and stress down into the present where you can delve into the nuances of the color green.
I wanted to share a few of the pieces that I’ve colored in recently. I don’t know what these looked like originally, but it’s fun to think of the way that adding color takes something from a professional artists and makes it mine.
I like to believe that as soon as I began to color, the picture became uniquely mine. Just like when you share anything, you give anything away, it becomes a shared experience. No one will ever color these the way I do, and I would hope no one would try.
This form of self expression takes away the pressure of a blank page, allowing everyone to consider in an adult way how to color something, while still maintaining the atmosphere of whimsy so pivotal to staying sane in this chaotic world.
The above isn’t finished yet – I’ve been working on it off and on for a week. It’s fun to let something sit, to not do anything with it for a few days, until you find the perfect color.
This holiday season, consider coloring books as gifts – white elephant, to your mom, to your brother, to yourself. It’s one of the best decisions I’ve made for my day-to-day.
I’m all rubble.
I am fragments left for a distracted boy to kick down the street
while he pops his bubble gum
on the way to the baseball game.
The same dirt that grinds into his knee
as he slides across home, brushing me off.
I am dust picked up by the air,
tossed through screen doors, soon
brushed out again
by exasperated mothers.
I’m the grime the working man
scrubs off his boots on Sundays –
sitting on his porch watching his children play in the dirt
I was piled into by a bulldozer
to clear space.
Credit to Shel Silverstein.
Rarely have I stumbled across words more true – the life you live shines out from the features of your face. Create laugh lines, not worry wrinkles. Spread joy and you’ll find it inside of your own heart.
It came creeping in, like rust.
From the periphery, at first – just specks.
Easy to ignore, to not even notice the way it corroded
the way a day passed.
Soon, though,
you realize that by virtue of existing
around his oxygen, his breathing, his form of lust,
you are falling to dust.
He walked in a room and slowly and surely
cosmetically at first,
to your core sooner than you ever dreamed
you realize your life can’t be
as it had ever seemed.
He sucked off your protective coating
kissed away your wax
tore off the leather seats
dismantling.
You walk, flecks of red falling
before your eyes – rust drifting
as you now drift
Knowing his oxygen is not the kind
to be kind to a heart.
Oh honey, you were cold.
No, this ain’t a ballad to the bad way you played me.
You were never that kind of cold.
You woke me up, baby, the way air does
in February. Contrary to popular belief, you were so hot
you were cool, ice to my lips after a long day gardening.
Cold, you were the mountain I would summit – striking
up into the ether saying I am. Oh, and I am
into that blue tint in your eye, the glint of snow
making a coronation
of your irises.
I do love the way your muscles cut
like ice, not rippling like water.
Oh the way the H and the 2 and the O are oh
so much stronger when they’re
frozen.
I’d be frozen so quickly with you – in time
in space, in that place where bodies meet and we realize
we generate our own energy in thus tundra.
I can’t appreciate, honey, the heat without your cold.
Winter became my favorite seasons and you are my favorite
reason to run outdoors in January – in a tank top.
Begging my skin to soak it all in and lungs
to gasp
and choke on the truth the air speaks
when there aren’t any heat waves to confuse it.
Metro-Minded 