Fists First: on bruises, scrapes, and collateral damage

Riding my bike, my mind on the disappearance of my lover, the first day of school, the perfect feeling of air on my bare skin, I am distracted. My tire catches an edge where concrete and sod meet, I fall, my calf abraded; I stand a young man ask if I am all right. I am.

Is there such a thing as a perfect moment in time. There is; it lasts until time realizes that you've been cheating them and rushes all of your stolen moments out of you in an instant. Time always wins. I know this, I've dealt with it in the past. I am not one to stand mourning, time tick-tock moves at an unbelievably rapid pace until I find someone who is capable of slowing everything down for an hour, a day. This quality, this ability to stand outside of time is relative to a person's experience of life. I have been blessed that I am able to move so calmly through the minefields. Not that I am unemotional, rather I know that emotions are relative and that time ultimately wins.

I am being pursued by a fellow student artist and do not know how to tell them that when I am with them there is no slowing of time, no magic, he doesn't know the difference between commonalities and connection. I am frustrated because I appreciate that we have so much in common, yet that alone does not implicate connection.

I am gaining access to my creative core and will have virtually unlimited access to the studios on campus. I avoiding taking painting classes. I don't want to pollute my heart.

Life is fragile, people are fragile. I fall all over myself this week. When this happens it is typically a sign of awakening, the slow return to my body after having been somewhat distant. As I re-incorporate the challenge of unification takes it's toll. Additionally, distraction and the effects of being human.

Lovingly, Chaya

Taped Ankles, New Nails

It's the first day of school first day of school school

I am still pigeon toed
My toes kiss,
They share secrets,
I am stronger
Than the history
of our making

Yesterday I went out with a girl yesterday; it was a pre-date, a get to know you, let's talk about everything from music and art to medicine and being queer.

She sat in the salon drinking mimosas, reading a cheap fashion magazine while I had my nails painted. I marvel at her self-possession. The woman taking care of my claws is young, from the coast, has white blonde hair. As she nods over my hands I see her scalp, it's pink. I am oddly mesmerized by the translucence of her hair.

We talk quietly trade gossip; there has been a rash of people being ruffied and it makes all of us uncomfortable.

Her left forearm is covered in crosshatched scars.  She is beautiful. Her eyes are the color of the sea at sunrise, deep grey green blue, iridescent gems. I am awed by her bravery, her eyes, her white hair. 

***

I have taken to wearing a corset under my blouse. It is this secret that I have something binding me tight, an absent lover's embrace. 

Simmer in the Sun

It's mornings like this, now, half six and just home, that make me wonder about my ability to continue to hop to like a bunny.

I hobbled to all night and made the cheddar
I raced the machine
Human me one, machine less than one

I am tired and suppose that I have an almost happy attitude all things considering

there are more motorbikes in the world

and I am one of billions, I am fairly certain I have a damn good life

***

concerns:

A's and how to maintain my near perfect GPA
Bravery in the face of
Comfort
Direction
Evolution of the mind
Fallacies, their
General relationship with
Hypothesis and the never ending lack of
Illusions which
Jumble my ability to express my
Kink

Lions, Tigers, and Bears: silver linings are not always easy to find

911 is not always enough

Today has been rough. I found out that my motorcycle is officially totaled. More information to follow on how the insurance is going to handle all of that. Most likely I just walk away even.

Thank you bear.

Sometimes walking away even is all we can aspire to.

Thank you Tiger

***

Awhile back I had a fair amount of my identity tied up in that bike. Not so much now, but it sure was nice knowing that I could leave, go out for a ride, chase a little sunset whenever the fancy struck me. I also feel like I didn't have a final goodbye, a final ride, any of that.

I was upset so I went for a long run. One third of the way through I fell and twisted the shit out of my left ankle. I lay on the ground staring at the sun for a moment. I stood shaky but stable; I have a fairly normal level of pain tolerance so I knew nothing to serious had happened. I continued. I started to cry, why the fuck today.

I am vulnerable and realize how alone I am, become thankful for my ability to see clearly, continue my run another five miles.

I never said anything about common sense.

***

In the past these are moments when I would heat metal to molten and press it into a sensitive area on my body. I can still remember the sound of skin pulling back from the edge of a horseshoe nail, the blister, a scar that never bleeds.

Today, I run, I fall, I scrape my leg and twist my ankle. The damage is somehow par for the co
urse for an athlete, yet the damage is most likely more lasting, permanent, likely to bother me in the future. Yet, you tell people you ate shit running and you get a high five. You tell people you have and attraction to pain and they give you concerned looks and comment on your mental instability.

Yet, I run and run and feel more alive. Perhaps this is the divide between good and evil. In failing to recognize self-inflicted harm as anything expect a strong urge to live is a mistake.

Where have all the monkey bars gone: an ode to skinned knees

Styptic, sterile playgrounds haunt the parks. Plastic wrapped joy shoots for slides,  pulverized rubber turf, the lonely fat kid trying to smash their unused body through the maze. We are raising a generation of children afraid to bleed. As if fear has ever stopped blood.

I have sweat condensing in the small of my back from riding my bicycle. Two moms,  distracted by their children's needs almost drove me off the road today. See, children and the fear of blood.

Warm to my bones

Coming slowly to my senses, no, more the gradual return of feeling to the places with in side of me which had grown numb.

Supposing that all of the time I spent not feeling has any conditioning affect on me in the long run?

There has been a fair amount of water and a large number of bridges in the last year. A lot of that is on me. I am a fire person. I like to burn things. I like to watch metal turn from a solid state, breakdown, become molten. I know that a well tempered weld is stronger than the original steal steel.

Years ago in, high school, my mother told me that the people I thought were my friends were not actually friends. I argued that we would be friends for ever. I was wrong.

I dreamed of walking through a diffuse Seattle with a man approaching silver fox status. We wandered a deserted pikes market and drank an espresso from a woman who eyed my candy. We bought coffee and since the Italian roast was to my lovers liking we bought dark roasted beans and a colorful counter-top espresso maker in a teal or red.

Earlier I dreamed dreams of despair and again back to the feeling of losing things that I didn’t realize I could lose. The feeling that trust misplaced is dangerous.

Again, California, what a disastrous mess. I had so much pride that I was unable to call the farm, tell them what was going on, express the simple basics of the situation, ask from help from the people qualified to provide it. Instead, fingers tight around my throat the walls shaking, the rage of a man struggling to put my face on his demons.

I see things now that I haven’t ever seen before. I am whole in a way that means I have been taken apart, examined, left dusty pieces abandoned, retired the junk, removed the treasures: fractured; divided; made into pieces.

Pieces once removed are able to be refit, welded back to the whole after careful examination, cleaning. With considered precision I re-knit the fabric of my being I am often at a loss. I find I make poor choices and hear a voice telling me that no man will want me, that I am not a real woman, that I don’t have anything to offer.

I find I make positive choices and I hear no voice in my head. I find I make a choice to stop listening to that voice and accept very much that to each day the struggles are sufficient.

I have been exercising. My lungs hurt. I need to do laundry.

Fuck Art, Let's Dance

 He brings roses and leaves them on my bicycle while I work.
I ride home with them in my teeth
the thorns are sharp
I taste blood
and am grateful for the
reminder of flesh on skin.

I woke from dreams of california, the farm, the food. It pushed me back to blog posts of november and december of 2012.  Reading these takes me back to the house on Dry Creek, to the time when shit there started to get more and more out of balance. It also reminded me so clearly of what I was doing there. The life I left, the life I thought I was stepping toward.

More, it was beautiful and I am grateful to have this record of my heart.

***

School starts in the tick-tock number of not too many days. I can hardly breath in anticipation. I get to go to school. I get to learn new things. I get to meet new people.

I met someone from the department yesterday. A fellow artist, a ceramic sculptor, a runner, a father, a formerly enlisted marine. I am not technically interested.

My drives these days are too complex for merely having art, fitness, adventure in common. I need the intangible fluid spark of desire.

I am also somewhat disinterested in pursuing or being pursued by gender specific bio-boys.

***

I take the bike into the shop today. What a blessing to be responsible enough to have full coverage insurance and know how to use it.

I had wanted to spend the last few days out camping alone, this event led me to quickly change my plans. I went running instead. I climbed a mountain with my legs and sweat. As my heart grows more firmly rooted in my heart, I am as thankful for my strength as I am for my vulnerability.

Positive Spin Doctor

I wish I made a photo of Starbright Firecracker BoomBoom this morning. She was attacked by a bear, pushed over and left for dead.
No one likes hospital photos. The impact of the fall caused the fuel pump assembly to break and gasoline to pour onto the gravel. Boo-fucking-hoo. A few phone calls later I have a plan in motion and will be up rolling within the week.
***
My hands smell like fuel. It's one of those scents that makes me tighten my inner thighs in anticipation.
I feel misplaced within this woman body inhabiting man world built by for suited to man.
The skin is soft and covers the long sloping curves where her back and thighs join.
****
I recover my poise quickly am laughing and joking about the bear within minutes. Information is king. It will take one week. Until then there's nothing I can do but bite my lip and smell the fuel only fingers.
*****
How much more I appreciate scents that have mingled. Fuel, morning sun on wet grass; the secret aromas my body holds post coitus when the sweat of two bodies dries in the tangle of my hair; charring meat, freshly cut grass, sprinklers on dry  concrete.

Worlds Collide, Light Rush In

I am back a dozen years
 reading diaries, eating fruit in the nude
my inspiration remains
worlds colliding
 (Anias Nin: What I most want in the world,
the only thing that counts,
my deepest need, my obsession,
is the dream of love
and that I cannot possess but intermittently.
I want it all, continual, frenzied, full of orgy,
even if I must pay for it with my death.)

The smell of rain on dry soil and forest fires, mingles with our sweat. Overlooking the valley my eyes sting as the salt of my perspiration leaks over the lids.

The soil is thirsty, the plants are dry, we all need moisture; the human body without touch becomes aged and stiff. A raven spies on us as we reach groping for our pleasure, not alone, animals a part of nature.

Will the Real Cast Please Stand

I eclipse myself

smoke and mirrors

My apartment is clean. I pulled apart the pieces of my life and cleaned. I opened my father's box. His book to me, his first card, his father's watch waited for me. I am tears, I have feelings, which makes me anxious. I move across the scope of my being, I drop things and am disassociated from my flesh. In former times this would be a moment when I look to external stimulation to emulate my internal sense of growing restlessness.

Break

I continue seeing the same person. A few days ago they slept next to me: I woke up with feelings.

Feelings do things like make me check my phone, smile to myself, have anxiety that perhaps there was no bottle and there is no genie.

They come into my apartment we are arms, legs, shirts pulling over head, sweat and lips over flesh. I listen to the beating of his heart, my head pulled, held against his chest. I hear a rhythm all its own and I exhale a breath I didn't even know I was holding.

 

A long hello stops short of goodbye

I take a long cold look at myself and am radio loud, shirt off

Legs long, wave hello to the sky

This is not a moment but a long hello

*conversations last night*

I turn to the man beside me
Dallas? I met you in Seattle

He was ready to be anything anywhere for me, since I have a thing for Native Cowboys, I was ready to let him.

Sitting near him as he rolled a cigarette he pulled his eyes down my legs. We shared the cigarette. Hot smoke burned the air between us. Come with me, he says, anywhere you want to go.

He pulls me for a moment close to him. I feel the heat of his body push through the denim of his pants. There is no reciprocal heat. I want nothing more than to run. But, I don't. I still have that fucked up thing. I walk back to his van. I sit inside for one second before I realize that this is the almost absolute last place on earth that I want to be. So I grab the handle to open the door.

Child locks prevent me from opening the door.

*I slide over the front seat and out the passenger door.*

Released into the night, into the company of C.

I have a few problems in life. Putting myself in fucked up situations by being willing to smoke a cigarette with a stranger is not something that I am proud of. It happened. I was there.

The moralist in me is judgemental: stop smoking; don't talk to strangers; don't play with fire; start being more of a grown ass lady and buy groceries.

I couldn't agree more.

So much so that I agree less. I am one day at a time the happiest, most self-expressed, darling.

I have been growing alfalfa sprouts and have a tendency to push myself to explore every aspect before my curious mind is sated. It is time to explore an entirely new world.

All my love always to you

No Now like Now

I am two short skirtz
Layered

One margarita

Not enough dinner,  no breakfast
I'll see you tomorrow says today

That's the way we roll
Solo through one to two

In the stillness

Our memories half forgotten
Breaks me in two
Dis-inhabited form
I regress, fall out of form,  recognize the bow of your lip from a distance you laugh as my knees bend
I a loss for motion
Still, finally from words
Find my mooring
Creeping moans ricochet
I between my fresh sheets which have never welcomed anyone save me
Move against time

I don't like losing to girls

Back two or three nights, I am at a party awkwardly not talking to anyone. Watching people become more loose, wild, inebriated as the night wears on. I smoke stolen cigarettes and pony up the courage to start a conversation.

Wanna wrastle? a man boy probes as he shoulders by.
Nah, I say, I don't wanna end bloody.
how about arm wresling, he persists.
left handed and you're on.

a spot is cleared for us at the table and we kneel, grasp hands.

He asks, are you even trying.

I continue to simply hold and hold, resisting only as much as necessary to wear him down, get in his head.

time passes, I am stalwart.

I don't like losing to girls, he grunts.

I smash his hand into the table:
then don't ask them to fight.

when people want to fight people against whom they think they have the inherent upper hand I rage inside: I wanted to chew his ear.

Dark Morning of the Soul

It's hazy sunshine this morning. I am having a real fit because I want to take art classes and to drop both my statistics as well as another major requirement course. What's a lady to do?

I am also struggling with a few other small things, such as laundry and not be able to completely give up smoking. I hate that the most. Laundry. In other news my focus issues have not improved in the last 36 hours. I am all over the place and exercise would help, but again, laundry.

I am drinking coffee and listening to the birds. The idea that they fly many thousands of miles to survive is thrilling. This season I will become a twitcher, binoculars and tweed and my camera. It seems almost indecent to watch as thousands of migrating creatures are following their instincts and I can simply follow them. I would love nothing more than to spend the spring in the Southwest. I would like to watch the desert awaken, that brief moment when the cactus flower and life in the arid expanse explodes into color. 

I had a friend in New Mexico. I wonder where the road has taken them. Some people have restless boots, other people put down long dusty roots. The energetic reserve I have saved to start school seems depleted. I think it may be working overtime almost every week. It's loud with so many people talking talking talking their voices swirl through the air, I pull a single thread of dialog out, football, beer, fall, before the voices overlap again and become a din of murmurs.

Fuck integrity, rules, and the game of love played through war

I just in the last ten fucking minutes realized a very important piece of information.

Eerie has been pressing in close the last week and I could not fucking figure out why. This morning I realized why.

The Ex kept a painting. So fucking creepy. He liked it. I am ultimately not surprised.

That's stealing.

I am relieved to know why I've been off and what that tickle in my mind has been about. It's strange having half memories that work their way to the surface. Trauma does that to a brain.

If you see this painting consider it stolen property. It looks much better in person. I promise.

Coffee and Luke Bryan

Got a little boom in my big truck...

I am top-forty country and black coffee; I just top-coated my left pointer finger in pure gold: You can't put fabulous in a box, mutha-fuckers!

Books and pillows litter my apartment. I want to remove everything and decorate as if I were living in a caravan traveling across morocco, colorful sils hanging, pillows, tea, water-p-pipes.

This week has been so up that I knew down was lurking around the edge of the almost full moon. I touched the sky yesterday, the wind buffeted me on the narrow ledge as one way or the other earth fell sharply away. Alive alive alive.

The taste of nickle in the back of my throat when I am afraid to say something, when I fight back tears, when I become so angry that I want the wind to hold me as I sail out over it all, and then I breath in deep and open my eyes and start to speak.

Hiding. Again. Perhaps. I will put my heart in a box, I will put it in glass, I will hide it in the depths of the ocean, I will put it on display in a museum. I will follow grace. I will sin. There is love to share and I push the edge of my finger to the rim of desire. I follow instinct. Alive alive alive. Remove doubt and dance.

Keen and Soon Forgotten

I, hear the sound of music in the wind,
know my ever changing and four chambered heart longs
at times to be the only dancer
swung about on the floor as dawn cracks

Back to living in a community of closed doors and open faces, I know that every word has the chance to echo across the peripheries and that echos boom where as spoken words are pushed through sweat matted hair in the secret silence, the space between lips and eyes wide open and the feeling of cold skin warming to the touch.

Echos of the past linger in my heart and I speak quietly, with my fingers and eyes. I find solace in the bottle, I find joy in the night, I fight all my urges and it ends up all the same.

Distant lands and another life linger in my fingertips.

I do not need to write or even rewrite history because now is potent. I am looking into the depths of my heart and know there is an ever growing lasting supply.

Intolerant of the natural spectrum of relation I delve into the invisible connection of desire's lubricating balm. In being a mistress, in being a survivor, in choosing the skin to put next to me I believe myself to be safe from the qualms and quandaries of human nature. I am all boots.

Long slow ache

The outside of my hips, the back of my shoulders, my eyes are all upset with me. I am tired and my ears hum along with the refrigerator.

Yesterday at coffee with E we laughed and at times our feet touched under the table. I notice a new openness within me to physical flirtation. There is a boldness in our dialog and I am relieved to have almost one friend.

Later at work I receive mixed signals from my crew. I have been upping my attire: vest, shirt, tie; trim, sharp dresses. I always carry an almost illegal knife in a pocket and use it to skin citrus. I am not invisible. Wool and stockings are around the corner, I want matte brick colored lipstick.

My apartment is a haven. We air our bodies and lay naked for hours eating melon, drinking coffee and each other. We part knowing that the long present is a tidy gift.

I am sore, tired, hungry; content with the gradual thawing of my senses I notice how much I've learned in my absence.

All my love and back