look at the lens, and smile! (candidly)

some things i have been doing/feeling/not-doing/not-feeling/etcetera in my life longer than the part of my life that they were not true for. these are the ones i am sorta proud of (these lists are the sort of things we do as we approach thirty years of age.):

*falling more in love with people more than they, or i, are ready for (or may ever be for that matter)
*playing music
*appreciating the way things wear over time
*loving words and the ways things can be put
*making a conscious-effort to be less selfish & more genuinely thankful for how other folks effect my life & visa versa
*reading
*thinking critically
*not eating meat (yes, this has always included fish-flesh)
*cuddling
*feeling romantic about nearly everything (no, not necessarily by the relationship definition)
*accepting that i am pretty rad, and that i can become radder
*riding a bike
*not cuddling with capitalism any more than i fee necessary to get bye
*loving my parents for the different people they are, and not for the people who are just different from me. yay, differences are more fun to learn from!
*embracing & oft enjoying loneliness
*thinking of my lovely sis daily
*traveling as much as possible to learn from other places and peoples
*wanting to spend time helping other people have a better time (and occasionally doing so)
*loving abandoned things,and book smells, and vinyl smells, & a few other objects
*feeling it anti-romantic to quantify nearly anything i actually care about
*being thankful for my stellar friends
*writing
*not editing much of anything, for fear that it could lose its love

these things, along with many others, i have taken on for more years of my life than not (in some instances this may create a double negative. Yeah!). i will be turning thirty years of age some time in the next year, and i kind of want to look back at all this (and that) and think of where i have been & where i might be. not likely to get too far into where i am going, as that is always such a patchwork in progress.

p.s. i believe that 'sun in an empty room', by the Weakerthans, is my favorite song today. i have already listened to it several times this morning. i also enjoy the painting by the same name, by Edward Hopper.

portland summer

good bye until next time old friend. i greatly appreciated every minute of both days we spent together; your glow, the flood of reminiscence you bring to me, the way you lit every room, gave reason to awaken, left early a set of darker pictures on floors in rooms long left vacancies. over and over i have pined for you, and our tryst will be missed.
until your perennial bloom...

train tracks skit-scat

the rhythm is dissimilar, yet invokes similarly staunch breaths.
expectation of perfections all on strong fear foundation.
we begin these things in weeks, then months, then we hope to remember.
effortless balance at first, we think of jumping at the totter.
same perception that it all should stay the same.
& there's spray-paint all over this thing.
thorax to toes and back again.
literally covering the hull and bow are tags older than us both.
and we wish to sail it until they fade or are scathed from our understanding.
the materials that makeup our movement arrived on different vessels, from disparate lands, with varying degrees of hardness in the scratch-test.
a patchwork of everything our short lives have moved through and beyond today.
we cover and comfort ourselves with the flesh of what we hope to be real.
and hopeful-hearts, however difficult to admit, are that gentle rhythm.

quandary

i once was writing a song, and called the local librarian to settle a dispute between two dictionaries over how to properly spell the word ellipses.
as luck would have it, there are several ways to spell ellipsis.
some may be plural, and other singular, but i was not one to judge such a matter.