i live a double life.

i live in a open book, on either page. i think it may be an atlas, but my life also resembles something of a novella. not long enough to write too much, not short enough to jot it down on a few sheets of paper. if you open to page 122, you will find me there. i will be sitting on the top of a mound of grass in front of a unfamiliar house, in a photo from decades ago. the crease in the page will be well worn in. the letters will shine out in different volumes, up and down, left to right. sometimes they will read a beautiful story, drawn out with long sentences and curious words. you won't be able to tell if the ink is a blue, a violet, or a deep red. sometimes it is all three. other times, the black ink on the paper will stand still and rigid. you will recite the paragraphs as if they are carved in stone, buried six feet under a tombstone that cradles dozens of dead lilies. you will read on and on until you start to notice that the hymn you are following is a lack of a pattern. the meter rings loud and untrue. no matter what the words may sing, you will feel them play right along with the photo of me and the grass and the house. the clouds big and glooming overhead, the sun spitting straight through and onto the wilted green grass. you trail down the page and smile, and wince, not knowing which is natural and which is reaction. fall onto page 123, and i'm there too. written deep into the plot, circled around clips and images and photos of the people i knew. these faces glow bright, into your eyes. they remind you of people you knew, people you used to remember. i sit facing the inside of the page, glaring over to the previous. your eyes roll back and forth, comparing and contrasting. my life stays on either page, reciting and remembering. i live in the center of this novella, this atlas, this map; jumping from page to page in my mind and in your recollection of the words you just read. i live in the duality of this story, of this life, and of this world. it is what you may think your eyes are tricking you into seeing, or what your brain is trying to force you to understand. i live in your mind and in mine. in the mind of one side of this page, one side of this country, and in the reality of the other side. which one is which is still something i have yet to discover.

cobblestone and wishbones

happiness comes from beneath the attention you give me. if i'm too good for the ignorant, unsuccessful, petty, and unfaithful, then i'm too good for you.
i can't wait for snow filled sidewalks and gloves, hand in hand walking down the street toward an 8 by 12 room where i will lay drinking tea and reading. me reading, him drawing inside the book he pretends to read. my head on his shoulder, waist tucked into hip, legs tangled beneath warm blankets. stray cat clawing at the door. gun shots, safely rounding off thousand of miles from where you are. kids across the street, at the park doing the things we want to live away from. a train ride from where his and my life began, where it stays, where it will end. a plane ride away from the place i belong, but will never end up. i stay on this coast to be happy and content. i visit yours to remember better times where i was never happy, never content. where i longed to feel the satisfaction that i do here. where i hoped to have made it count, and to have made life become what i had aimed for. you were a huge factor into the equation, towards the figures i count into the journey that i made. i would give up a thousand wishes, a thousand memories, a thousand miles to be with you and be happy with you. this could never happen. i've tried too many routes, too many attacks. too many surrenders. i'd rather retreat to a place that others may see as opportunity, as a positive escape. in all honestly, these brownstone houses and sky scraping homes are my surrender. they are where i want to stay to ignore the issues i try to fix. this is where i run off to when i don't want to confront anything. i run into the lives of amazing people, amazing places, amazing circumstances. into the arms of someone who i can guarantee will bring about the best in me. into the arms of the reality that you are not in my life. knowing that this can be the only contact with you that will make me happy, makes me angry. makes me want to be as far from you as i can get, to make you want to be as near as you can manage. i hope we can manage.

this is it.

i write way too often and think way more too often, so i decided to put it all somewhere a bit more acclaimed than myspace. i have ideas in my head that i'd rather put out on a blank space than tangle it up in a socialized website. my moleskin is a little shy, and doesn't get out that often. here is where my pen to paper can become exposed in the easiest way. i hate the internet.