i'm packing up my things, carrying all my possessions out in boxes, trashbags, slipping through the hallways, bumping into the walls, when i run into jonas, my neighbor, a short, sprite, 60 year old doctor.  he smiles, i pause, casual conversation ensues.  i tell him i'm leaving tomorrow morning, he expounds his laments, the talk turns to poetry, to art...

as i turn to leave, the conversation winding to a close, he turns back around, 

"you know," he says, i once asked a painter friend of mine, 'what happened to surrealism?'.  and he smiled at me and said, 'look around.' "

i lock myself in my now empty apartment all day, yesterday, wearing nothing but my emerald scarf wrapped around my body,

(you ain't a fairy you're just a bitch).

rob and sean bang repeatedly, on my door, at certain moments of the afternoon. i do not answer.  i do not venture outside.  not that i don't want fresh air, but i know they'll hear the swing of my door, the click of the latch, will pounce immediately.  

i wonder just how deep my faith runs.  i wonder just who is writing this.  i wonder just why.  i wonder just where.   i wonder just why.  i wonder just why.  i wonder just why.  

your legs aren't the only ones marked up.  how many dreams have you chased?

(sam and i, in an elevator.  

"haven't i told you?"  i'm giggling "my roommates and i have this thing, right, we asked people, who would you rather sleep with, someone without arms or someone without legs?"

sam laughs, god, i don't know, arms probably.

i mean, i add, i probably wouldn't sleep with someone without limbs, in general.

he blushes, i'd sleep with you, even if you didn't have arms.)

i'm leaving boulder, on saturday.  driving straight home.

hello, persona.  

what is it you want to present?  

vegetarian status?  wildflower honey?  homemade guacamole and rob's delicious curry stir fry?

not late evening mountain drives, for sure. or middle of the nightmares.

skiing on wild snows a good one, that'd probably go over pretty well, ascending thousands of miles into the moutains and trudging up snowy cliffs and lying down on my back with a goddamn ice pick sliding down the ice and skidding to a stop in front of christies laughing eyes.

let me ask you this

would you put your heart on display?  for sale, even?

i write about april, tequila, shooting stars, tripping, my black dress coat, torched, whispered, teal.

i should have been writing about the mountain.

i want to write about touch, or the lack thereof.  inability to.  and the vulnerability of strangers.

how we don't trust anyone, who doesn't fall in love 4 times a day.

and, some things i'm reading.

"i am trying to keep my heart open.  no need to slit the soles of my feet.  we begin the day in snow."

"let it come.  its coming.  when it comes, stand as close as you can. step over the line.  stand with your legs wide apart, palms facing out in front of your chest.  eyes open.  wooden boards.  blood in my hands.  a face.  a man, hunched above the shining metal, folded over.  paper.  his eyes.  gone.  arizona. oregon.  oil.  smoke.  my ankles are shaking.  i'm swaying.  stop it.  don't look away.  this is what you wanted.  you wanted to begin.  if you close your eyes, you will die.  but what about him?  that was him.  take the stone out of your shoe.  keep walking."

how i turn my music up.  working for a nuclear free city, my soundtrack.

"the sides of my mouth taste of licorice.  2pm.  i'm still wearing my pajamas.  there's so much and i can't begin.  sometimes i want to stick my pen in the arms of people who bore me.  every morning i wake up, put water on for my tea, flip my edith piaf tape, clear a space at the table.  i don't want to write stories anymore.  i am not a stripper."

jesus, holy mary mother of god

pray for your sinners now

and at the hour of our death, amen.

and i'll be damned if i end up playing job with god's loving hand on my throat.

i need a meaning i can get behind.

I raise my eyes, and watch a bumble bee, hovering around the pink flowers that grow alongside our screened in porch, one to the other, to the other.

I had a dream, last night, where I dove deep in the ocean to scour a ship wreck for gold, and what I ended up finding, was that the gold was inlaid within the matchbooks, sunk at the bottom of the sea.

"i don't know when we'll meet again, or what will happen in the future, but desolation, desolation, i owe so much to desolation, thank you forever for guiding me to the place where I learned all. now comes the sadness of coming back to cities and i've grown older and theres all that humanity of bars and burlesque shows and gritty love, all upside down in the void, god bless them, but you and me forever, we know, o ever youthful, o ever weeping," down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared and i said "god, i love you" and looked up to the sky and really meant it "i have fallen in love with you, god. take care of us all, one way or the other." and, in keeping with japhys habit of always getting down on one knee and delivering a little prayer to the camp we left, to the one in the sierra, and the others in marin, and the little prayer of gratitude he had delivered to sean's shack the day he sailed away, as i was hiking down the mountain with my pack i turned and knelt on the trail and said, "thank you shack." then i added "blah" with a little grin, because i knew that shack and that mountain would understand what that meant, and turned and went on down the trail back to this world."

i pull my small jetta into the grass at the side of the road, and venture back into the graveyard that had been our playground for my late child hood through early adolescence, where we'd race after barn chores were completed, still in our paddock boots with zoe and elmo and disappear into the home that we'd created, amazonia, it was ours, and i pull my now 22 year old self up onto the crumbling wall, still in my paddock boots, and its there, still, far more overgrown of course, but the remnants of our three tiered swing even hang askew, from the branch. dusting the cement wall with my fingers, i see my name, in the cockeyed print of a nine year old, JAMIE, carved into its face.

i think of her, of her independance, of her spirit, of her thirst for adventure, and smile "i'm doing this girl justice."