In A Green Shade

I love you because it was so easy
to open my heart.
I tore the locks from it one by one.
Look, there, on the floor.
They’re lying, rusty, in the dust.
I cut my hand on the splintered places left behind
but I was so busy looking at the light streaming through the wide open door that I didn’t notice.
The silver line of the scar is still there.
See?
Running right through life line, love line, fate line.
I like it. I’ve made my own line.

I wrote a song about the meaning of life.

I used to sit and contemplate

My life and all its meaning,

The ordinary musings

Of the average human being.

But as I’ve grown and as I’ve aged

I’ve ruled a few things out.

I think I finally understand what life is all about…

Sex, sleep and coffee.

That’s right, you heard me.

That may not be profound

But ask around

I’m sure that some agree.

Sex, sleep and coffee.

Or sleep, then coffee

Followed by some sex

(The order is not so important I guess)

And though you could do two together

I don’t think that I’d ever

Risk scalding my sweet sleeping beau

With espresso

Slow brewed from arabica beans,

So be careful, take heed

Mixing sex, sleep and coffee.

Now I’ve friends ‘cross the pond

Who I know are quite fond

Of a warm, steaming mug of Tetly

And I hope they don’t think

That I think that their drink

Suggests a lack of existential meaning.

And my dear, sainted mum,

She drinks tea too because

She says coffee gives her indigestion

So you Brits (and you mom)

You can still play along,

If you follow this simple suggestion:

Sex, sleep and hot TEA!

Your life still has its meaning!

It still works ‘cause it’s brown,

You can stir it around

With some sugar (or honey) and cream!

Have your coffee or tea

Just as long as you still sleep and screw

It doesn’t much matter which brew that you choose

We don’t have to agree

Over coffee and tea.

oh, the danger

of making someone your whole world

and giving them the codes to arm the bombs.

We are creative because we are broken, because to put the pieces of ourselves back together requires us to be creative, to look at the cracked and chipped pieces of ourselves and see the beauty instead of the flaw.

I don’t worry that a tarot card reader would turn over blank pieces of paper instead of my future, I worry that the cards would all contradict each other and I’d leave knowing nothing more than what I went in knowing.

Email. Facebook. Twitter.

I wonder if I’ve been crying. My eyes have that swollen, sticky feel to them but if there have been tears today I haven’t noticed. Its strange to think that a person could cry and not be aware of it but I suppose life is full of strange things, this being one of them. Or not. I’m not sure it even happened. 

I suppose that’s part of the problem. I’m not sure of what’s happened. I’ve always had very vivid dreams, my entire life, and lately I feel as if my dreams are my real life. Something is happening and I am reacting to whatever that may be, moving, responding, like people do. It’s when I wake up that things become strange. My brain can’t seem to decide on any thing, my eyes can’t seem to find a place to light or anything to see, really see. 

Email. Facebook. Twitter. 

I’ve fallen behind in all of my classes, I’m buried under a pile of reading that just gets deeper and deeper and I’ve forgotten more Spanish in the last five weeks than I’ve learned. My days just seem to fly, I don’t know where they go. 

Email. Facebook. Twitter. 

I feel disconnected with my own life, and how is that for strange? I’ve got this daydream in my head of waking up in a small, neat house and drinking coffee and baking my own bread and filling jars with homemade jam, wearing a floppy hat and gathering an apron full of tomatoes and beans and lettuce from a back yard garden and then sitting down and writing something, a poem, a story, a song. Hell, a list, a list has a beginning and a middle and an end and it would at least be something but I spend my whole day wondering where my day has gone, and the page stays blank and the garden doesn’t exist and the bread comes in a plastic bag from somewhere I don’t know. 

Email. Facebook. Twitter. 

If the sun and the moon are the eyes of god then maybe (s)he’s not too worried about us since (s)he’s only half paying attention. Which makes me wonder - what else is (s)he up to?

Crisis

I think “midlife crisis” is a stupid term. I’m 33. If this is midlife for me then I’ve got some complaining to do. And crisis is maybe too strong a word. According to my phone a crisis is defined as a time of intense difficulty, struggle, or danger.

Nevermind. I suppose that works.

I don’t want to go to school anymore. I’ve been in school since fall of 2007. I feel like I finally know what I want to do with my life, which is the same thing that I wanted to do in 2007, write, create, MAKE, and let’s not discuss the thousands of dollars I’ve spent getting to this point, but I can’t do what I want to do because I have class, I have homework, and then I have life shit on top of that. Groceries, bills, kids, husband, house. I’m too busy to live. I wake up in the morning and have all these things I’ve got to do and no time for what I want to do and it makes me want to stand in the middle of the road and scream. I’m healthy. I’m surrounded by great people that I love beyond expressing, but I feel like I’m on a treadmill with a picture of life in front of me and no matter how fast I go or how long I walk it never gets closer. Never. And so I turn it off at the end of the day and get back on in the morning, staring and staring at that picture.

So what do I want? I don’t know. I suppose I want to wake up in the morning and read emails while I drink coffee and then put words to paper or on screen until someone reminds me that I haven’t eaten, and perhaps a shower might be in order? I want to walk through the woods and look at the sky through the trees and then write about how that sliver of blue sky plaing peekaboo beyond the green made my heart feel light. I want to give away and throw away all the stuff that has begun to feel like weights tying me to the ground. This and that gadget and the thirty shows growing dusty on my DVR and all the crap that I HAVE to have, they’re all just rocks wrapped with shiny metallic paper and ribbons holding me down, holding me back.

I want things to be real, not just plans for later. I feel like nothing is real.

I don’t know what I want but I know what the world thinks of people who say screw it and go with their hearts instead of with the flow, making waves and not sticking to the program. We publicly applaud and secretly curse them, how dare they?