explanation-erish 1,035_:

i often share words about how i want to be, and what ways i would love to show up. for a long time i have lived through what i would love to do/be if i had my druthers. 

i know this may not always make the clearest sense, but it is a necessary thing for me. i feel like living life through what i can currently do is limiting, and in some odd way dishonest/half-honest. 

i am not interested in what systems in my life have allow me to be/do. 

that feels like voting for winners. bullshit.  

i need to look at what/who i would prefer to be. without those stories of something like hope in my daily life, i feel a lot of heavy water. 

maybe this is why i like to make plans that i know i can not act on. that one likely is not a healthy one to continue. 

Yelping for posterity, they were

to the Über driver that brought myself and a Tinder date to this Air B&B pad: please don't make me talk to you. I have plenty problems, and a lot of friends, and don't need to hear about yours. also, you have a very hairy right arm. shave it. 

student prompt

one of the students in a creative writing class I lead wanted us all to try and write this list. 

"10 tricks for surviving depression". 

***i wrote my list on ways to live with depression***

I. community - make or maintain a few great friends who honestly support you being precisely  who/what\how you need to be.

II. create - find a few meaningful things that scratch your brain, and make it itch often. make time for these things. 

III. truth - be as honest with yourself and others as possible. finding kind ways to share truth can cut some space for ache. 

IV. thank - share appreciation for people you know and don't, giving love and energy where it comes from. 

V. exercise - move your body in ways you deeply enjoy. often. 

VI. write & read - write/journal every day, not only when you feel sadness coming and going. 

seek out literature on anything you want to learn and learn about it. it is sometimes helpful to read other people's stories of sadness. read about other ways to define happiness. 

VII. success - if you find sadness in measures of success that you did not create, recreate them. find a definition that fits your needs/beliefs\strengths/ontology.  

VIII. de-pathologize - ask yourself if depression is a problem. it may be an element of your life that rolls in and out through time. one you can work with, like being hungry. 

IX. sit - stop in a place, with an amount of noise and movement that feels good. reflect on all of the big and little bits, & all of their transitions. learn to be alone, focused and blurred. 

X. ask - know the way of the stinging nettle. tell the world how you can be touched, and how you can not. share the parts of you that friends can be kind to. 

what is a sick day?

if you sit as still as the forest can seem-
feet steeped in head-height ashes-
you get to see magic.
one flower-seeking American Goldfinch-
this precocious friend landed on my beer bottle neck, and hung out for about 18 years-
those were the good years.

on swimming, when I can't move at all

i woke up this morning with a sense that i was walking out into a frigid cold ocean against the tide. that's not quite the feeling. more similar to a rip tide that carries the force of ten waves back out to sea, in reverse. that describes a part of it. 

the larger part also made sense related to water. the feeling when you are too deep, your ear drums begin to quiver, and the weight of the water makes it difficult to take even a slow breath. numb hands and feet. that is most of it today. i don't notice that the aquatic life around me is sending signals with its unusual presence. i find little beyond the growing weight of water pressure. the notion of a thing i am primarily made up of killing me us an intense and amusing one. 

this morning i woke at 5:37am for a Skype call with one of my best friends who currently resides in Paris. we were to discuss the future of a farm i plan to live and work, owned by his aging Italian mother his professor brother, and Johanness himself. i was excited for the call yesterday. this morning i could hardly pull together the smile to keep my friend half convinced i was talking to him. i kept my part of the discussion brief, and asked questions as i could. 

later, at work, i was tasked with a beautiful hike, accompanied by several beautiful young people, and one amazingly supportive and kind friend/coworker. i could not speak. when i swim too deep, human interaction is the hardest action i can imagine. nothing feels worse than thinking through the ways i will fumble, and all long enough to skip the slot where i could speak. it is cheek biting and harshly cuts blood flow somehow. 

i can not check in with folks to know if they want support, or need things from me, because i can not spill out words. not only do they come out in way that i don't understand, and it feels like language will just happen to me, but i feel as though i physically can not open my mouth and make sound release. i feel fortunate that i work with someone who understands something like what i am feeling. i appreciate that recognition in deep and meaningful ways, and hope to return the love when it is asked for or needed.  

on my way home i received a text message saying that my child was fed supper and was reading books, and that i should take my time and enjoy the warm spring evening. every last obligation for the day had been lifted, and i was free to relax and reflect as i like. this was no small task to undertake, and i am choked with generosity. it is a beautiful thing to have the rocks taken out of your pockets, unprovoked. even for a moment. 

thinking this should solve most things, i gave it a few spring-air-smelling breaths. 

nothing. 

still too deep to take a proper breath, and far too much rip tide.

now i lie in bed. awake for a while, i will write in my medicated state to the ones who held me up today. there were several people who saw something i didn't want anyone to see, and they held me in ways they thought i wouldn't notice. some did things they may not have wanted to, but did out of love for a friend. others wanted to be kind, in the ways that they were, and they were. 

i appreciate all of the beautiful people around me more than i can express with letters. these are the friends who do the work of keeping me alive. with their love and energy. 

still this support is not why i love them. it is a part of it, but i love them for many reasons more. i wish i could tell them more about that. i wish i could tell them all of the ways and reasons i love them, in addition to the depth of my appreciation for their support of me on days similar to today. today i can only hope they know. somehow. and i can hope that tomorrow will be different. or some day soon will be.        

q&a for a dear friend's MFA thesis project. (their part is the "q", my part is the "a")

Protected: June 22-28, A Wild and Feral B-Sides Kind of Week

The Mixtape: a Field Guide to (Wilderness) Interrogation & (Feral) Appropriation

(**note: images should be sent to winberrl@onid.oregonstate.edu** / all writing should posted below, anonymously, pseudonymously, or otherwise)

Please submit responses, in writing AND in image (photograph or illustration or other), to the following 14-question vertical interrogation:

1. How is it that you have come to breathe?

reply: 

i breathe via community, and hope i will come to stop the same-

the image in a child's mind of the way a game named "light as a feather stiff as a board" should look-

that is how the life stays in me- 

through the love of people, and their figurative fingers-

some who have no idea how brave they are, or how much they hold up-

for this, meditation can be a thousand thank you letters in my mind 

image: 

the dusty pile of unopened letters, tied with twine, in the sunshine beneath a budding Sycamore. a field alongside the tree fills the air with the rich smell of hungrily poised soil. just out of focused sight, a swing hangs untouched by the young love that once moved it, day-in. now it loves in the wind.    

2. In which ocean has your heart landed and how did it get there?

reply:

my heart/soul/spleen/trigonometry-equation is a thing that begs no explanation or parameter-

the thing, its attempts to explain the nature of the unknowable, and it's shape related to a bread box are unknowable in themselves-

its affliction to knowing a home is a question it begs of me and you both-

this knower has landed where it is through opposition and thoughtful miscalculation-

it has never passed a fucking quiz, and can create beautiful pointillism with bubble sheets- 

image:

a vision more like sound. the sound of wind blowing as hard as wind can, through a chain-link-fence

3. How will you let it be different every time?

reply:

the ache would have it no other way-

it will always be different, so long as i act as a subject of my own understanding, upheld by aforementioned fingers-  

refraining form the object of ideal types and gaze and unnecessary judgement- 

image:

a bible with some of the words cut out to reveal a beautiful piece of literature

4. What does underwater smell like?

reply:

 a mixture of fear and fun-

in the best way that can make sense-

image: 

bubbles. lots of them. followed by the sound they make when they reach the waves. 

5. What value do you place on your sacrum?

reply:

enough that i had to look up sacrum when i read this query- 

i cracked it once-

jumped off a rock that was about two-of-me-tall and landed on a rock that was less than a bread box below the water's surface-

i had to walk with a cane and sit on an ass-pillow for several months-

image:

one warn ass-pillow, spinning wildly around a hardwood cane in the air-

6. What does it mean to be made in the image of god?

reply:

regret, ache, heavy guilt, & confusion. not in that order, & with no temporal significance. 

image:

a beautifully veined elderly hand slips gently off a wine glass and lets the liquid fall deep to soil-

dark stained soil-

every onlooker is gaze-locked on the soiled wine-

no one offers a mop, or to fetch more wine 

7. Where do you go when you cannot move?

reply:

when the chain comes off its gear, the air becomes honey, my skin feels dead, i have to walk through chewed bread-

i go to the shadowed forest-

the smell of things dying and growing, all being warmed or rained clean-

that is the closest to a home my heart has ever allowed-

some people are the forest-

the occasional urban tree-

often the desert works well for these things-

first, it is a smell of good dirt-

image:

i am lying under a stand of Bull Pine that i climbed, covered in pitch, sleeping on a giant black Newfoundland puppy.    

8. What is the sex of your language?

reply:

i am hopeful that there is not one for me- 

this is part of my personal ache-

sex/gender/sex are not things i want to be who i am-

i find the identity versions hurtful-

image: 

two bathroom doors-  

9. What do you remember about tomorrow?

reply:

one of my favorite phrases is  to "remember something new"-

this is an entirely secret one, but i will say it fits well as we learn to love our age-

image:

flannel sheets drying in the wind-

young people wiping flowers across the white cotton face-

creating shapes-  

10. What is the meaning of the color of your eyes?

reply:

there are things about myself i don't know, no one tells me about, and no one judges aloud-

i am troubled to find these things feeling good-

when i smile with my eyes they say certain things that work well with strangers-

that means i like to be as kind as possible with people-

image:

just enough water to keep the office plants alive-

no more than the least necessary-

the plants are as beautiful as the people who water them 

11. What are the consequences?

reply: 

how hard do we push, and with what-

truth might keep consequences coming in the warm window-

if it takes anything other than love and honesty i am not buying a ticket-

if the reflection is one of systems on rational vomit, i am staying in for a bit-

telling myself something i know. something i can tell you.

no matter of curtains will cover what comes back, nor need to do so-  

image:

the wizard of oz. some gentle form of naked

12. Who told you it was ok?

reply:

i did not ask-

image: 

a 97 yea old person with one hand on their stalwart hip, and the other fist shaking air in protest-  

13. Where is your impetus?

reply: 

to be with the earth, animals, other things, in the ways they want to be- 

to never not ask, no matter the cost-

to create until it hurts too much, then create harder-

to give, as much or more than feels good, followed by a forest-

my drive is to never stop learning, form the fingers and all others-    

image:

middle aged tattoo artist-

waking on a long winter morning-

covers pulled back just enough-

staring at their toes-

asking for the first time, "who's idea was it?"-

14. How will you continue?

reply:

with the same strong fingers-

& some new ones of varied sturdiness-

beyond that, i hope i don't know-

knowing, planning, scheduling, are things that give me pains in my body and mind-

i have an agreement with me that i will continue, until something gives out-

the momentum i feel is stronger now, but ultimately my compass-rose is playing darts with a borderless map-

image:

a young child wearing engineer-overalls, lying across chilled train-tracks, shoes rest propped on one side, head rests bent on the other-

the neighbor's gifted globe spins round in one hand-

a faint vibration of wonder in both ears-

day after 34

yesterday was largely spent riding old highways in the George, and latter reading Kafka while Penelope danced in sunshine.
before the sun slipped I put an old stove-top-wok on the sidewalk & lit a hot fir fire inside. after stacking chairs around, a bunch of neighbors came by and drank and smoked together. therein are more than three of my favorite things. 

to be had

sleeping and not sleeping are both different when had at the end of county roads. this kind of quiet, framed by birdsong, softened tin roof tapping, allowing insects to sing out, is the best damn quiet necessary. when I was a younger person I slept with my window open most of a year round I could manage, letting in the kind of quiet that happens in the absence of people. the silence and sound of all of the living life that goes on while we intake to industry and sirens. I miss this. 

1981-2015:

as a young growing in rural North Idaho (the ever cold and snowy north) there were as many potential friends as leaves on the flag of our northern neighbours. 

extroverts learned quick-step to any warm corpus, their binary polar reminded that the forest was the place for breathing. 

became season creatures, became alice in dead ways that wrinkled out skin, uncooked. 

running mountains to top out lost, thirteen years of age ago, without fear of coming home for supper. burning things made in coffee makers from chemistry classes we could never pass. 

power in a crochet head scarve. taller and more willing to touch the place my bathing suit covers than another relative or any - - one alive.  

distance gave me a reason to create it, nighttime handed me a love story for beautiful = with-difference. 

these dances ultimately took off their clothes and lied side by side. 

the inclusion survey on policy.

space blanket sleep. 

power

alone

adaptation

strode

close 

when holding still becomes movement

recall the hands that caught a body as it fell in the well
the discussions they had, and too finger printed

monochromatic dresses tell the world that they mean business, pleasure, sorrow, wagon wheels, & sometimes feelings like hate
in most of those minutes - we - build a space in our homes for holding one another
i/we/you construct a thing, utilize it far beyond intention, and entirely negate it the following whatever
the same schism in our bodies somehow looks like ways to squeeze out comfort, and is immediately broken down for recycling
if schisms, built spaces, mouths, love or house-holds were ajar without owners they may fill up with bits of others
spaces expand when the dress is on a floor or a body

in through the nose, out through the mouth, every piece as anthropocentric as this thought & those prior  
the past of wrapping finger prints around things and making them our own, occurs as often as we admit the answer to our existence
from the shoulders of morose giants, shout inquiry, shield an impact, create a list of followers & the litigations therein
distant din of cages closing, reminding us all of love and that we are also animals in these same pages we are described as - their - creators

i have water that dunks my head and allows the baby to be named Cathartic, questioning its -will-
shortly after a screen appears, allowing for the answers, removing the marrow aching tabula rasa
back to shoulders & hips & lips all spilled more breath into things and never poked at where those came or where wind will end
to draw our graphs as circles, weighted in place but not without connection, draw a bath, draw form a snapshot memory
time capsules may not hold fingerprints to the narrative we care to uncover

proof from under the nails, skeletal without withholding, prints long fallen away
a pillar named Catharsis,  supine naked by an empty altar, in all the ways empty can be  

fork it

there is a smell
and i can't smell it, or i can. but i live here, so i have no way of knowing.
the 4k lbs flower on my shoulders looks lovely, and maintains the roads int eh winter so we all can arrive on time.
the knees of these roads are buckling under the salts of Gibraltar, and we stare at the beer signs in the corner and wonder why that smudge never comes clean.
i remember when i learned to spell recall, and was rewarded with a can of lysol and a scrub brush.
more rusty metal in those back yards than a Nash Rambler in 2013, hallways packed with 4k lbs flowers, packed with tape.
as we begin to learn the distinction between words that make similar sounds and shapes we are rewarded with cuts on our elbows, and our first taste of real plumbs form a tree.
some way we thought these things therapeutic, only to retrieve them pedantic, patronizing, and at least a little maze bound.  
we gave our hands over to the past that we write that day, with those droves of fire ants, surplus bags, gumshoes on the concrete, and a buss ticket to some place free of ore.
thanks for the reminder.
black coffee.

s*pace*

Jen doesn't like it when the maids leave any lights on after they have left.
it makes her feel as if someone is there, or as if she can not be certain of the contrary.

she also has her doubts about this new cellular phone, and car.
they could be smaller and more personalized.

she certainly prefers a room cold to warm, and a weekend full to empty.
Jen is an adult, after all.

YOU slow down!

that moment you can no longer find any info about your old band, and there is some other band by a strikingly similar name. that's a squishy one.

time to keep wishing there was time to play music again!

hella lame

negativity. or, with a twist of erudition, call it hyper-critical-thinking.
it' simple.
it takes far less effort than finding positive.
as a good friend called it -> focusing on what is wrong and broken, rather than what is right an worth mending.
& what's more, it does not require you to attach yourself.
if you are only ever on the minus, no one will ever suspect you of actually caring for anything.
you will never have to stick up nor back fill.
you will rarely be challenged, because you simply dislike or are not enticed by.
yup, itsa sickness.
over and over again, this year and that, you try to shake it.
time to find the positive first, you will say.
i just don't want to be so predictable. so cloudy. so negative.
then it creeps back in, like a New Year's Eve drinking resolution.
one glass on the weekend...then the remainder of the bottle.
support groups? naw. there is little cohesion in the clouds.
maybe a role model?
i want to be more like_________
i most certainly do not want to be like_______
it's undoubtedly a fight worth fighting.
beating back the clouds.
mending and righting.    

Q - cubed, or something mathematical.

Q is the space between entering a room, and the realization that it is not invited-
the still confused, expectant little bird-
a brimming second glass of wine
Q is crescendo prior to piano-
a warmth remembered deeper and more visceral than others-
a tent in any forest
Q might pop in at the most uninvited and quiet of moments
amid symphony chorus, a choir clap
whilst everyone is pretending their hardest to be a writer
Q is a variable in a statistical analysis
solved for by children's laughter
separated by an integer greater than 1/3 of a lifetime
Q can only be what it is, and severely never impostor-
through its servitude to impunity, it is excluded from a waining gibbous-
only ever full moon
Q is drawn out by friends when it can
savored by the light of candles and cop cars
held open by irony and recollection, like a door for elderly admittance
Q is romantically, emphatically, unequivocally, the amount of time i/we should smile vs. how often i/we do.
it's me/us at the top of something I/we have not seen since I/we was/were a child/children, too short to reach up there, and ostensibly too young to care

The Geography of Bliss

"Cafes are theaters where the customer is both audience and performer."
~Eric Weiner

all these things are living & not bound by punctuation

her folks named her caribou after the country they longed to wrap themselves in

 pining for any place that requires each other for warmth

born bluer than the earth from a pub's window view on Jupiter, she fought hard for this one 

 said, "ride slowly there are children playin'

right there past the dog that's weary"

 waiting beside a bowl to dine or die

i can not tell if her father passed, or if her lover left and made her cry

 could it have been a past acquaintance kept lit by her young heart's light

all i know for sure is someone should hug her real hard

breathing threw it, the way ancestors had

 the way all animals do

chemical free and bound by possibility 

 leather in the mouth tastes like bark in the hand

if her eyes don't burst, her throat just may

 hands available, this one will fight back hard

in a space that fills the definition of watching and being watched at once

 we all sit and speculate

even caribou knows she doesn't know for sure

 her adjacent friend's empty mouth, brain, tea cup

liquids her past people drank with a variety of dinosaur 

 all i know for sure is caribou is stronger than any one in the joint 

& it's not for a career that holds her from feeling 

 she has been fortunate/unfortunate enough 

to live by the blood or brass ingested

 if that adds to comfort, well it's not in a scuffle with every other day

caribou; a picture of what each of us remembers 

 and the leather we will taste again some day soon 

arrived: the forlorn blossoms of an eggshell

well, we've done it sir.
you and me, and certainly I, have managed to become something no one else would like to be.
be it literal or otherwise, this place is all our own.
we fought so hard for the things we began to believe in our youth, and rejected any alternative.
struggles to free those we have never met from the chains our flighty privilege could see. accept nothing but absolute equality on all fronts. abhorrent equality. confront capitalism in every minutia impossible. bark at the moon while we pray to her in our mind. & potentially estrange one another. odious ideologies that we know can smell like the only answer.
and i am now drunk enough to start rocking to and fro. where is that conviction going?
and this is now the mint green walls of your past musings. dinner plates.
nor is it the drab grey walls. now that line our state's capital.
histories written on narratives we read in classes we never would attend.
i am what you are afraid of. a punk with a motive.
fought so hard we can't even admit we are only talking to ourselves. or am i? you, likely, have moved on from this long ago.
Oh, you've got green eyes
Oh, you've got blue eyes
Oh, you've got grey eyes

gibran kahlil gibran's: dogeared & stapeled

once annually she fights in the face of peace and tranquility to stand up straight and pretend
a beautiful theatric, likened to frying food sounds we all know as if they were our own skin
this battle with the sky, the walls, every old waxy record, and any still living plant
and knowing that others didn't bother, well that certainly will not make her stronger
she is not Catholic, nor any other form of deep ground guilt nor shame
like a Tuesday off from work, she does not see where there would be time

the great contributors to our revolution are those who created these "money on trees theories"
see the devil bleeding in a ditch, every Christian rushing frantically to save the soul of their fallen angel
without someone lying on top she would never be certain that there is a chance she. will. never. get. up.
muscle enough to break her own bones, fortitude is never what she needs

& it's so simple to peer back through the tunnel, before the ceiling dust fell from off her shoulders
that dust will never come clean of her clothes, and to cast them off, so stains pores and pillars
for others, that was the birth canal, otherwise known as their mother: leading from the uterus through the cervix, vagina, and vulva.
no one can see her dust, it is hers to breath

from the ditch she has a lovely view of all the answers to all of the questions that held her in dichotomy 
the sky, the walls, very old waxy records, botany and the like. 
what that means to her is the great western seagull defecating on a bronze bust of everything she ever believed in
she is the gray cloudy walls that wreak of unplayed vinyl and eucalyptus
the dust from from the ceiling is keep care of her
sunlight is the christian in her bleeding ribs   

chrome was once a plastic-some-place

when we awaken to exclaim "today..." what we more-so mean is what's left over.
see, a few years back there was a car down the block that folks slept overnight in regularly.
that car was painted with the wheels and tyres intact.
now, who could say what's become of it.
conceived a few children & possibly a nutrea nest & the usual needle holster & then ten paperbacks from the nearest free-box fantasy.
it made these things.
form the warmest heart of Mexico, & a never sleepy Malaysian capital from whence it came.
those windows held reflections of a visage. a fuselage for sale. again.
the thorax of this thing weeps as well as its midnight song that evening. in the wind. under their bodies.
the sleepy "heart and soul" an artifact of culture that gives it as much as any semaphore under capital statue shadows.
& it is not the ephemeral nature of the thing that makes it ring. that is not the case for any thing these-days.
it's the shine that both knobs of an aged radio could give you, when "something to look at" meant as much to you as hose needles & that baby & rodent resting & discarded novels & Mexico & every square centimeter of Kuala Lumpur.  
& perhaps more.